


Burning Stars, Aching Bones

by OccasionallyCreative



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Leia Organa, F/M, Skywalker Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8142448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/pseuds/OccasionallyCreative
Summary: Luke Skywalker is gone. The First Order will rise with the help of the Dark side. Then a Stormtrooper meets a scavenger, the scavenger and the Stormtrooper meet a smuggler, and the galaxy's fate isn't so certain anymore. Episode VII AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First things first, the following fic adheres to only the events shown to us in the movie. As much as I'd like to have done so by now, I haven't been able to read the canon novels, such as 'Bloodline' and 'Life Debt', so that's why I'm sticking only to the movies.
> 
> This fic is exploring what would've happened if Dark Leia was in the picture instead of hot mess Kylo Ren. Not a totally original concept I know, Leia succumbing to the Dark side, but it's one that wouldn't let me go. This should take about four chapters to tell. So this is my first published multichapter fic for the Star Wars fandom, which means I am thus incredibly nervous. *screams and runs away very fast*

_Leia…_ The voice is soft, calm and familiar. Her home is erased from the maps of galactic history. Tarquin had coldly watched as the oceans of Alderaan were scattered into stars. The weight of a million souls bears heavy on her shoulders. The voice speaks again, a whispering wind in her ear. _Leia, your pain is real. Do not ignore it. Let it flow through you…_

She comes to a stop, tilting her head to find the eyes of the Commander. “We have no time for sorrows, Commander,” she says, sucking in a breath and hurrying on. There is a battle to be fought, other planets and other lives to save. The voice fades away.

* * *

The explosion’s heat deflects off the heat of their backs. Her breaths are hard, sharp, against her chest. Her legs pound into the sand. The fighter whistles through the air.

“Hey! We need a pilot!”

“We’ve got one!” Rey snaps. Sweat beads against her forehead. Damp strands of her hair stick to the back of her neck. She runs.

“You?!” the man shouts over the sound of the fighters. He stumbles as they run towards the quadjumper. It’s barely big enough to carry two, let alone them and a droid, but it’s fast, nimble. “What about that ship?”

Rey shakes her head as they pass it, grey and unused.

“That one’s garbage!” Flames erupt in front of her eyes, black smoke carrying the thick scent of ochre. Rey stumbles to a stop, shielding herself from the heat. Her choice gone.

Only one choice left.

She nods, already turning on her feet. “The garbage will do!”

Fighters still scream through the air. The three of them hurry onto the ramp into the belly of the ship.

“Gunner position’s down there,” Rey throws over her shoulder, hurrying towards the cockpit. She’d memorised the layout of this ship years ago, when she’d thought it was abandoned and hollow, like all the other ships on the burned yellow deserts of Jakku. (A compressor, a fuel pump, and a beating from Plutt’s men had told her different.)

“You ever fly this thing?”

“No – this ship hasn’t flown in years!” Rey replies, settling into the pilot seat. Her fingers flick over the switches and dials before her. Her stomach twists into knots. It’s bigger, so much bigger, than her quadjumper, assembled from old parts found in the belly of ships. She sucks in a breath. She can do this. Gives a nod, mutters under her breath. She can definitely do this. She draws the calm in, focusing on raising the ship into the air.

The ship falls onto its side. It’s heavier than she thought.

“Holy—!” Rey glances back, shakes her head. Tightening her grip on the controls, she pulls the ship higher into the air. The outpost boundary crashes underneath the underbelly of the ship.

A loud thud, another loud curse. “Kriffing – who the _hell_ is flying this thing?”

“I am!” Rey shouts. Green laser beams shoot past the cockpit window. “Are you ever going to fire back?”

“What? I haven’t got the chance yet!” the Resistance fighter yells. His voice crackles over the aged radio. “Hey, wait – don’t go high, go low, go low! It confuses their tracking!”

Rey nods. “Okay! BB-8, hold on – I’m going low!”

A shrill beep tells her the little droid is far from ready, but willing.

“Like hell you are!”

Rey twists her head. “What do you _mean_ , you just told me to—”

The ship jerks high up into the air away from the ground. Rey gasps, staring. Two hands gripping hers, warm from the effort. She tilts her head up. A man stands over her. Pale, tall and cumbersome, hair black and eyes brown. He takes up more room than she thought possible, and he has a tight grip on her controls.

The radio crackles again. “I _said_ go low!”

Her new co-pilot is silent to the order, his dark hair pulled messily into a bun at the back of his head, his clothes grey and white. His hands still on hers. Growling, Rey slams her hands against the controls in front of her. But his knuckles turn white and he brings them back up. The ship creaks against the force of two opposing commands, struggling to sink lower towards the endless sands.

“Hey! What’s going on up there?!”

“I – I don’t really know!” Rey blurts, her face red with effort. The man forces the ship further upwards. Shots from the fighters whip past.

“Go low,” Rey yells, “you’ll kill us!”

“Better that than hurt this thing!” her co-pilot snaps. He reaches up, flicking an overhead switch. “C’mon baby, don’t fail me now—”

“They’re shooting at us, we need to go low!”

A shot hits the underbelly. The ship jerks to one side. Her irritating co-pilot quickly rights it, flying ever higher.

“Uh, the cannon’s stuck in forward position,” the Resistance fighter says over the radio, “I can’t move it. You gotta lose ‘em!”

Her hands are still imprisoned by his grip. Rey glares at the black-haired man stood over her. Still he flies the ship in high arcs over the Starship Graveyard, a field of broken ships and sand. “Now will you go low? I don’t think you understand the situation we’re in!”

“I know exactly what the situation is kid,” the black-haired man replies curtly. Rey shifts her gaze towards the outside of the cockpit. Three fighters still follow them. If he truly understood this situation, he’d do the right thing.

“Then you’ll – let—” she strains to keep hold of the heavy ship, shoving all of her effort into pushing forward, “me – _fly!_ ”

The black-haired man stumbles back, his hands flying from the controls. A brief smile on Rey’s lips. She tilts the ship onto its side, swooping through the air, curving round. Shots still come from everywhere. Diving down towards a scuttled Destroyer, peeled of its parts, Rey threads the ship into its dark belly. It isn’t the best idea she’s ever had, but shelter in Jakku is a rare thing to find.

“Are we really doing this?!” comes the voice on the radio. Rey weaves through the ship, but the fighters are following, shooting without hesitation or pause. The space becomes narrower and narrower, light flickers over her face—the ship launches sideways, back out into the harsh sunlight.

Rey blinks. She whips her head towards the black-haired man standing back behind her, his hands once again over hers. He lets go of the controls at her glare, but leans forward until they are nose to nose and Rey has to lean back. His brows draw together into a hard frown.

“Don’t hurt my ship.”

He straightens up. Rey looks back at the switches and dials before her. A lever stands to the right side of her. Another not good idea. She reaches out, grabs it. Tugs it down. The ship tilts up, up, up. It curves round.

Everything seems to hang there for a moment. The world of Jakku, a planet of broken ships and desperate survivors, upside down. All she can see is yellow and dusty grey.

Three heavy shots shake the body of the ship.

Three fighters, billowing smoke and flame, crash to the ground.

* * *

“Your last shots were dead on, you got them all with one blast—”

The Resistance fighter beams a bright smile. His skin is dark, his hair black but it’s his eyes she focuses on. They’re terrible liars, filled with kindness and excitement. “You set me up for it—”

“Hey!” The two turn their heads. Rey’s excited grin vanishes. The black-haired man ducks under the cockpit door, storming towards them. A blaster hangs against his belt. His shirt, a muddied white, is rumpled. His trousers, his fingertips, are streaked with oil stains. More oil stains streak his temple and the line of his jaw. His angular features seem made for frowning.

He comes to a stop in front of them.

“Anyone who goes against The First Order like that – they’re either trouble, or in it. So you’re both going to tell me your names and where you came from.”

Rey glances to her companion. His smile is gone too but he’s the man who’d held her hand. He’s the man who asked her if she was okay, and had never given his name to her. Just protected her without a thought. She holds a breath. The world goes still again.

“Finn,” the man answers.

Rey breathes. Her eyes hold onto Finn. “I’m Rey,” she says, flicking her eyes at the last moment towards the black-haired man.

“Hm. You’re from Jakku,” he affirms, pointing at Rey. His expression changes when he finds Finn. He gets an impish curiosity in his eyes. It’s the kind a scavenger gets when they find a piece they know they can negotiate hard for. “You – I’m not sure of.”

“He’s with the Resistance,” Rey says. She nods to BB-8, rolling to stand in front of her, and looking up at the black-haired man. He beeps a proud hello. “This droid needs to get back to his base.”

The man’s shoulders sink. He turns away, stalking down the ship’s corridor. His right hand finds its way to the blaster at his hip. “Then it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t deal with Resistance. I’ll drop you off at the Ponemah Terminal, but from there on in—” He turns to face them. “You’re on your own.”

* * *

A low blue light stands before the dark figure on deck. Her hands, gloved, are folded in front of her. Her robes are a smooth black, the material of her cloak gathered at her left shoulder. Her saber is at her right.

Lieutenant Mitaka keeps his eyes on the saber as he approaches.

“My lady,” he begins his words with learned assurance. He receives silence. He swallows. “We were unable to acquire the droid on Jakku. It escaped capture aboard a stolen Corellian YT model freighter. We believe it had help. From an enemy of the First Order.”

Two words break the taut silence. “From who?”

Mitaka wishes, all at once, for that same taut silence to return. “An enemy, my lady.”

A hum fills the air. Sarhu Ren slowly turns, her free hand clenching tight into a fist. She holds the lightsaber close to his face. The single smooth red beam of it floods Mitaka’s eye line. The lower half of her face is covered, but her deep brown eyes lie exposed. Their expression is calm. (It takes little to change it. Rumours abound among Stormtroopers yet to learn that she can hold people with those eyes, cause them to do whatever she bids.)

“We are the First Order, Lieutenant.” Ren’s voice is small and even. “Which enemy?”

“FN-2187.”

White hot heat sparks across his features. Mitaka screams. Blood and sinew burning against him as the lightsaber carves into his skin, the hollow of his cheek. He drops to his knees, collapsing, crumpling onto his side. He holds his cheek and whimpers. The blood is already cauterised. A metallic scent burns in the air.

An invisible hand cups his cheek. Suddenly tender, like a mother cradling a child, its palm moulds against his wound. He closes his eyes and begs to bleed.

The invisible hand grabs him by his throat. Sweeps him up until he is held there, hovering high in the false air.

“Who else?” she asks, certain of his answer.

He chokes it out. “A girl.”

He crashes onto the deck’s cold floor.

Lady Ren stands over him, lightsaber still humming, that thin red beam still burning his eyes. Her eyes do not flicker or change.

She leaves him to be found.

* * *

“You can’t take us to Ponemah Terminal.” Rey storms into the cockpit, and stops without warning. Finn, following in after her, uses up all his effort not to crash into her and send her flying. The black-haired man is sunk back into the pilot’s seat. His eyes closed, arms folded over his chest, one leg crossed over the other. On the dash, a white light slowly flashes, the ship locked into autopilot.

Rey tries again. “We need your help.”

The black-haired man’s eyes remain closed.

Outside, a large black ship hovers a short distance away, surrounded by stars. Doors are already opening. A red light guides them towards a boarding hatch. Finn finds his breath catching.

“That doesn’t look like a terminal.”

“Relax kid. It isn’t.” The man shifts in his seat, sitting up and flicking a switch. The white light fades. With lazy ease, the man steers the ship closer towards the opening boarding hatch.

Low, wide arches line the high roof of the hangar. Unmanned ships, some old, some new, dot the open space. Catching sight of the cargo, Finn narrows his eyes.

“That’s a SF-01 B-wing heavy assault starfighter,” he says, the fact coming to him as easily as it is to breathe. “Didn’t the rebellion use those?”

“Yeah,” says the black-haired man, distracted. “Why should you care?”

Where his friends (friends, he thought with an ache) had spent the rare snatches of time alone playing, discussing simulations and upgrades, he had been with others in the barracks and absorbed history of his universe, of the galaxy he was going to help repair. He had spent nights dreaming of his first battle. He had dreamed of villains with lightsabers. He had dreamed of defeating them with a single blast.

The boarding hatch doors close as the man guides the ship down towards the floor of the hangar. He lands the ship in the centre of the large hangar. The doors close behind him. Waiting at a console outside the ship is a large creature, like a humanoid covered in fur, holding a bow blaster in its arms. The black-haired man stands and gives a wave, turning and heading out of the cockpit. Rey aims a questioning frown at Finn. He can only shrug in return.

“Bacca,” the black-haired man calls, heading down the ramp, “put these three on a pod, direct it to Ponemah Terminal. We’ll make our stop afterwards.”

The giant furry figure grumbles but nods. Rey rushes forward, BB-8 speeding down the ramp after her.

“You have to help us!” she calls to the black-haired man. One last attempt. There’s desperation in her voice, an edge of a certain fear. The black-haired man’s already got his back turned on her. Finn stops at the end of the ramp and watches Rey’s hands. Her fingers curl flat against her palm. “This droid _has_ to get to the Resistance base.”

The black-haired man comes to a stand in front of a console. His eyes sweep over it, deliberately searching.

“You said,” he remarks, briefly glancing at Rey, “and I told you: I don’t get involved in any of that. I know better.”

Finn steps forward. “The droid carries a map that leads to Luke Skywalker.”

The black-haired man stiffens for a second. His body suddenly tight, as if holding a breath. The tall furry figure raises its head, growls. Rey gasps and hurries towards the furry figure.

“You know him? You know Luke Skywalker?”

“You understand that thing?” Finn asks, taken aback.

“That thing can understand you too, so watch it.” The black-haired man, speaking up so suddenly, shoves his hands into his pockets, turning away from the console. He stalks past Finn, heading back up the ramp. A short roar from the furry figure makes him stop. He turns. There’s a benign look on his features, a hint of a long-term defeat. He shrugs.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, the question directed to the furry figure. “We got the Falcon back. I’d call that a day’s achievement.”

“The Falcon?” Rey rushes forward. She stares at the grey ship with a renewed awe in her bright brown eyes. She’s slender, a warrior’s form, but three buns in her hair and that same awe makes her look as young and new as Finn feels. “This is the Millennium Falcon? You’re Han Solo?”

“Han Solo?” Finn blinks, even more taken aback. “The Rebellion general?”

Rey’s nose wrinkles into a frown. “No. The smuggler.”

The black-haired man scoffs.

“Do I look like Han Solo?” He cuts off a nod from the furry figure with a point of his finger. “Say that I do Bacca, and I’m leaving you here.”

“But this is the Millennium Falcon?” Rey interrupts, reverence for what she stands before still etched in her face. “This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in fourteen parsecs?”

“Twelve!” The black-haired man snaps, turning on her. He immediately closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Thirteen, fourteen, it doesn’t matter. You three are going on a pod and going to Ponemah Terminal.”

He stomps back up the ramp into the ship. Finn is the first to follow him inside. BB-8 brings up the rear, speeding along behind. The furry figure heads straight past all of them, walking down the cylindrical corridor into the cockpit. An indignant roar follows.

“I don’t know who it put it on there either!” The black-haired man glances back at Rey over his shoulder. “Did you put that compressor there, on the ignition line?”

“No. It was Unkar Plutt.”

“Huh.” The man turns to face her fully. He moves deliberately, every movement measured. “What happened to Ducain?”

“The Irving Boys stole it from him,” Rey answers. “Then Unkar Plutt stole it from the Irving Boys.”

An amusement crosses the black-haired man. “Then you stole it, before I could steal it back.”

 _Steal it back_. Finn shifts on the spot, tucks his hands against his hips. He presses his lips together, aiming a searching look at the black-haired man. “What were you doing on Jakku anyway?”

“Doing what everyone on Jakku does – getting parts.”

“Why do you care about the Millennium Falcon?” Finn asks, glancing around the cylindrical corridor before focusing back on the black-haired man. His answers are short and to the point. Training had taught him never to trust short answers. It may not have been the sign not of a liar, but it was a sign of someone omitting truths too dangerous for them to confront.

The man’s eyes shift, growing dark as they sweep towards Finn. “You sound like a Stormtrooper.”

“He’s every right to be suspicious,” Rey says fiercely. Finn takes a step back. He’s seen that look on her face once before, and he had ended up with a stick to the face. (He struggles to hide a smile.) “We don’t even know your name.”

The man stares down at her, a mixture of curiosity and offence in his study of her. Rey stares up at the man in return. The man’s fingers flex.

“Ben,” the man answers finally. He turns on his heel back towards the cockpit. “Hey, Bacca, anything we can do about that compressor?”

A thoughtful, conversational growl is the reply. Finn leans towards Rey.

“What _is_ that thing?”

“He’s a Wookiee,” Rey replies, turning towards him. She gives a light, gentle smile. “He speaks Shyriiwook.”

A muffled, extended, painful roar sounds from far away, buried away in the freighter. Finn gulps. He knows that sound. He’s heard it in too many training simulators, too many tests to not know. It’s a long way from the warm roars and growls of the Wookiee. Ben curses under his breath.

“A Rathar better not have gotten loose.” He runs past Finn and Rey, ducking under the ship’s low ceilings. The Wookiee appears soon after, still carrying the bow blaster in his arms.

Already moving, Finn motions for Rey to follow him.

“You’re not seriously hauling Rathers on this ship are you?” he asks, heading down the ramp, into the high-arched hangar.

Ben stands at the hangar console. His eyes trace the multiple screens. Catching up to him, Finn follows his gaze. The pictures are grey. The images show a dozen narrow corridors. An old stain covers the lens of one camera, obscuring its image of a large, deserted break room.

“Great.” Ben sighs. He turns to the Wookiee as he points to another screen. “It’s the Guavian Death Gang.”

Finn watches the image, feeling Rey at his shoulder, doing the same thing. On it, a scrawny male human, armed with a single percussive cannon, taps at the window of a blast door. An eye, large and alien, slams against the dirty glass. Finn jumps. Throughout the ship, an angry roar echoes. On the screen, the scrawny man laughs.

“How did you even manage to get Rathars on this ship anyhow?” Finn asks.

“Used to have a bigger crew. C’mon.” Unhooking his blaster from his belt, holding it between his hands, Ben hurries out of the hangar.

The four of them run into a long, narrow corridor. BB-8 rolls up behind them and settles between Ben and Rey’s legs. He gives out a bright series of beeps.

“Ssh!” Rey whispers, but her features catch in a frown, raising her eyes towards Ben. Her eyes are warm, with a new kind of curiosity. Ben raises an eyebrow.

“What is it?”

“He says – he says he remembers you.”

Ben’s eyes lighten as he looks down at the droid. The turned down mouth twists with the hint of something. “Does he now? The droid stays with me,” he announces. He bends down and grabs at a grate cover with one hand. He pulls it away. “You two, get down below.”

“And the Death Gang?” Rey asks, climbing inside.

“I’ll talk my way out of it,” Ben replies, dragging the grill back over their heads with ease. The Wookiee barks a laugh and growls. Ignoring the laugh, crouching down low to see them, Ben’s hand moves over the safety of the blaster. He flicks it off.

“When I give the signal, do as I say.” He stands. Hidden underneath the floor, Finn looks to Rey.

“What did the Wookiee say?”

“‘You’ve got as much diplomacy as your father’.”

Above them, a blast door opens. Heavy footsteps, indicating an arrival. Finn is just behind Rey as they crawl towards the end of the corridor. Finn tilts his head up. Red-suited, tall figures march through the blast doors. The scrawny man, recognisable from his encounter with the trapped Rathtars, shoves his way to the front. Black hair cropped, he’s got a face like a rat, his nose turned up and nostrils flared with his mouth turned down.

“You’re a bloody dead man,” he spits. Finn counts the faceless red-suited figures. Ten of them, and they all have blasters.

“Bala-Tik.” Ben sounds bored with just saying the name. “I take it you’ve got a complaint.”

“We loaned you 50,000 for this job,” the scrawny man says. He rolls onto the balls of his feet, cracks his neck. He doesn’t stand like a soldier. He stands with his feet widths apart, his hand always at his cannon as he spits out words with venom. “So did Kanjiklub.”

“Hunting Rathtars is expensive work, Bala-Tik.” Ben speaks the words with familiarity, as if he’s repeated the conversation many times over. He avoids the subject of whoever, whatever, Kanjiklub is. “I spent the 50,000 you gave me.”

“So you admit it?” snaps Bala-Tik.

“That I made a deal with Kanjiklub? Never even met them.”

Blast doors from the far side of the corridor open with a low hiss. Finn turns, crawling towards the new arrival. Another group, the same number of people, more blasters. Kanjiklub.

“Tasu Leech – guess you’ve got a complaint too?”

Their leader’s anger comes in smooth considered sentences. His features are pointed, his skin a light brown. Finn looks to Rey at the sound of the foreign language spoken. She is as lost as him.

“Look,” comes Ben’s voice, as if an instructor to children, “you’ll both get exactly what was promised. I’ve already got the Rathtars on board—”

“Your time’s run out Solo,” Bala-Tik interrupts. “There’s no-one left in the galaxy for either you or your father to swindle. We want our investment back, and we want it now.”

 _Solo_. Finn glances up at Ben through the grated floor. Ben’s hand grips his blaster tight and the resemblance is uncanny.

“You’ll get it back, both of you. As soon as I deliver the Rathtars.” He clears his throat. A broken, jagged sound which is interrupted by another. A second wave of coughing. Finn realises. It’s a word.

“Fuses,” Rey whispers.

“What?”

“Fuses.” Rey crawls over to a set of pressure pads which cover thick black wires snaking against the metal body of the ship. “If we can close the blast doors in that corridor, we can trap both gangs.”

Her hands hover over the switches. They freeze when Bala-Tik speaks again.

“Wait. That BB unit. First Order’s looking for one just like it.” Finn’s chest tightens. “And two fugitives.”

Rey’s palm trembles. Swallowing, she slams her hand against two of the switches.

Silence. Roars, screeching roars, reverberate through the high, narrow corridors. Closer than ever. An alarm blares. Red light floods Rey’s face.

“Oh no.”

“Oh no, what?” He already knows the answer. The low dread worms its way, transforming into a pulse that beats at his temple and the back of his head. He feels as if he’s going to be sick. Rey lets out a breath.

“Wrong fuses.”

* * *

Screams are left in their wake as Rey runs into the hangar. The memory of the Rathar, tentacles flying and wrapping themselves around terrified bodies, around Finn, teeth sharp and hungry, threaten to overwhelm her head.

In the hangar the Wookiee is leaning over, whining and growling in pain. _Damn blasters_ , he says in Shyriiwook. _Knew they’d get me one day. I’m sorry Ben. I’m so sorry._

“Don’t be stupid Bacca, you’re hardly hit. Hey!” He looks up as Rey runs into the hangar. Finn is close behind her. BB-8, beeping madly with fright, rolls up the ramp. “Scavenger, make sure the door’s closed behind us. Finn, kid, you look after Bacca.”

Rey whips round at the sound of another roar and crunching. Heart in her throat, pulse thrumming, she follows Finn and the Wookiee up the ramp, shutting the ship door behind them. Turning, she sprints into the cockpit. She slips into the pilot seat, automatically flicking switches. She can get them out of here.

“Unkar Plutt installed a fuel pump – if we don’t prime that, we’re not going anywhere—” Two large, already familiar hands land on her slim waist and they grip her tight. Rey gasps. Hoisted up into the air, she’s set on the ground. Ben pushes past her, slamming himself down into the pilot seat. He points to the co-pilot seat.

“There,” he says, gruff, possessive. “No-one’s flying this thing but me. Get working on that fuel pump.”

Rathar teeth slam against the cockpit glass, the round inner body slathering against the glass, long tentacles wrapping around, snarling and spitting. Rey stumbles back, screaming in fright.

“This is the last time I ask Han for a recommendation,” Ben mutters, pulling levers and grabbing the pilot controls. “Watch the thrust – we’re going to get out of here at lightspeed.”

“From inside the hangar?” Rey asks, clambering into the co-pilot seat. “Is that even possible?”

“Angle the shield and we’ll find out,” he replies. He grasps both controls and pushes forward. “C’mon, c’mon—”

The ship judders to a halt.

“Compressor,” Rey says gently. Ben glares at the red monstrosity that sits at the top of the flight controls. His palm slams against it. Their bodies thrown back, the Rathar falls away into pieces, grinded into blood and bone. The stars stretch into endless blue.

* * *

She meets a boy already her height, with eyes far older than they deserve to be, under stars and in the middle of wet green. Rain comes but once a year to the sunny isle, and it comes in a torrent. Water drips from the tip of a nose too big for his face. Salty tears catch at the corners of a too full mouth. He wears robes that are too big, borrowed from some other time years past.

She sits down in the wet, leaf-strewn dirt beside him and takes his hand. It is warm, dry and in desperate need of comfort. If she looks behind his left ear, beyond the growing dark hair, she sees the destruction of an ambition. She strokes the remnants. The strands come to pieces underneath her touch. The boy draws his knees to his chest and sobs harder.

“Oh Han,” she sighs, “what have you done now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! If you did, please leave a comment and/or kudos below. Give a penniless postgrad some love. <3
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Swathed in dark robes, Snoke sits high above the amphitheatre. Tall narrow arches surround his throne. Empty chairs set in a semicircle face his words. Age finds him in every part of his body; fingers long and thin. Eyes sunken and hollow. The skin of his lips are dry, his breaths are slow.

Sarhu drops to her knee as she enters. She bows her head.

“Supreme Leader Snoke,” she says. General Hux stands beside her. Snoke holds up a hand in greeting.

“To business,” he says languidly as she stands, holding her hands behind her back. His forefinger curls to touch his palm.

“I have heard some grievous news. The droid is soon to be delivered to the Resistance.” His hollow eyes focus on Hux. “This will lead them to the last Jedi. If Skywalker returns… the new Jedi will rise.”

“Supreme Leader,” Hux begins, “I take full responsibility for—”

“ _General!_ ” Snoke’s rage fills the antechamber. Hux twitches; Sarhu Ren gives nothing. Snoke settles back into his seat. “Responsibility is not what I seek,” he remarks, his rage a thing of a sudden past. “I seek strategy – and ours must change.”

“The weapon, it is ready. I believe the time has come to use it.” Snoke is silent as Hux speaks. Sarhu turns her head to see Hux, desperate for approval, and confident now that he speaks of war. “We shall destroy the government that supports the Resistance – the Republic. Without their friends to protect them, the Resistance will be vulnerable and we will stop them before they reach Skywalker.”

Sarhu focuses her gaze on Snoke. His interest is piqued.

“Go,” he says. “Oversee preparations.”

Destruction had made the Empire what it was. Destruction, it is clear, will make the First Order what it is too. Hux wears a sneer, malicious, and all at once he is too young for his uniform and rank. A faint, constant pain scratches underneath her skin. She swallows.

Snoke is once again thoughtful. “There is something I must confess to you, Sarhu. You alone. The droid we seek is aboard the Millennium Falcon. In the hands of your son – Ben Solo.”

_You saved him, Leia. Save him again._

Words to another woman. One long dead.

“That is of no matter.”

“You have performed great feats for me.” He gives a wry, gruesome smile. “You have raised the Knights of Ren to a position in the galaxy I once only dreamed of. Does the name Ben Solo truly mean nothing to you?”

She is silent for a moment.

“It never did.”

* * *

The drink is off-planet, brought in by an off-planet human with boots wet with rain, green with grass. His face is lined by age, his clothes too expensive for Jakku. His black hair has flecks of grey, and he has a laugh in his throat. Seeing him in the heat of Jakku’s day, bartering with a scavenger, Rey thinks him beautiful. He possesses the kind of beauty she’d once found in a wilting flower.

She finds him again in Jakku’s night. He is hunkered underneath a piece of tarpaulin that flaps against Jakku’s desert wind. His cape is swathed around him. A long distance away, huddling together in the shelter of a campfire, his bottles clink against the teeth of Plutt and his men. They laugh. There is talk of long lost days, when they were leaner, fitter and could go anywhere. (It is hard to believe there was ever a time Plutt could’ve moved anywhere but Jakku.)

Laughing too hard at one of his boss’ jokes, a thug kicks at a full bottle. It falls onto its side and rolls down the shallow dune. It lands with a soft bump against Rey’s foot. She bends down and picks it up. The glass is blue, of some ancient time, a stamp she does not recognise carved into its side. Rey glances back to her quadjumper, heavy with her loot for the day. Plutt will be too drunk to value what she has, let alone _care_ what it is.

She sets down her quarterstaff in front of the man and sits beside him. She tugs down her scarf, lifts her goggles. She shoves the off-planet bottle towards him in offer. Thanking her, he weighs the bottle in his hands. Rey’s eyes scan his face. His curved jaw is marked with a bruise that’s already healing. His bottom lip is split.

“Corellian whisky,” he says. The grass on his boots is smothered now by marks of sand from his beating. His beauty still shines through. “Animals don’t even know what quality they’re drinkin’.”

“You shouldn’t have brought it here,” Rey tells him plainly, looking between him and the bottle. “Not unless you were planning to sell it.”

“I wasn’t. Just stopping off for a part for my ship. My friend’s gonna be real annoyed when he discovers what happened.”

“Will your friend hurt you?”

The man bursts a laugh. “You ever have any friends, kid?”

Rey shakes her head, fierce at the thought.

“I’m waiting for my family. I don’t have time for friends.”

“Pity.” The man stands up, clasping the bottle tight. “You’d make someone a good one.”

He strolls away from her.

* * *

In the cockpit, sparks burst out of an overhead unit. Ben groans.

“Electrical overload. And the coolant’s leaking.” The scavenger eagerly jumps up out of the co-pilot seat, but he can only glare darkly at the compressor. “I hate you.”

Fiddling at wires in the unit, the scavenger whirls on him. An idea on her lips. “Try transferring auxiliary power to the secondary—”

“Secondary tank, yeah I know,” Ben mutters, turning in his seat, flicking switches.

A pained, angered roar sounds from the hangar, followed by shouts from Finn, the kid. Ben twists in his seat as BB-8 rolls into the cockpit door, beeping furiously. (Apparently Bacca insulted him.)

“Hey Bacca, wait until I’ve fixed this damn thing until you kill him!” The alarm grows in volume around him, lights flashing before him, again warning him of missing coolant. “If I ever meet this Hutt-spawn Plutt, I’ll kick him halfway ‘round the galaxy—”

The alarm, the lights, all of it stops. Ben turns his head. The scavenger sinks into the co-pilot seat. Her bright smile, her brighter eyes, is reflected blue by the rushing stars. Ben flicks his attention towards the circuit board clutched between her forefinger and thumb. Ripped wires stick out of it haphazardly.

“Compressor?”

She beams wider. (When she smiles like that, she’s kind of pretty.)

“I bypassed the compressor.”

Ben clears his throat, blinks away all thoughts of pretty smiles. Switching the Falcon into autopilot, he stands.

“Still not helping you.” A smile doesn’t change anything.

“What?” The scavenger follows him out of the cockpit, jogging alongside him. “You have to – you’re the son of Han Solo!”

“Oh, hell.” He shakes his head. “I knew that name was going to get me into trouble one day. Look, I am not helping you.”

“Why _not_?” Her offence is matched by an indignant beep from the droid.

“You’re fugitives for one thing,” he remarks, heading into the hangar. Chewbacca lies stretched out in the compact medic bay, his arm neatly bandaged. Finn sits, slumped over and exhausted, at the half-circle seating. Ben gives a brief smile at the used bandages scattered out on the deck. The kid’s done a better job than he can. Usually Bacca doesn’t stay still unless there’s a pretty woman tending to him. Then he’s all charm, shrugging off the pain as nothing at all.

“The First Order wants the map,” Rey explains, coming to stand beside Finn. “Finn is with the Resistance. I’m just a scavenger.”

Ben glances over at the kid. When the scavenger isn’t looking at him, he is stricken with guilt.

“The map’s probably a fake.” He sets about clearing up the scattered bandages, throwing them into the garbage chute. “People have been looking for Luke—” he swallows that mistake, covers it with a cough, “for Skywalker for years now. Ever since he disappeared. Looking for the last Jedi’s a lucrative business.”

After all, there’s nothing more hard to find than the beginning of a story.

The droid beeps with offence.

Rey smiles again, amused by the precocious droid. “He says his master would never give him a fake map to look after.”

He turns on the droid. “Go on then. Show me.” Despite the droid’s insistence, even Poe Dameron can make mistakes.

The droid rolls to the centre of the room and opens up the map. The hologram’s blue light fills the walls of the deck. Planets and stars hover and rotate. A dotted orange line shows a destination, a singular planet hidden among stars he can’t place. Ben follows it, turning with the rotation of the map, scanning the planets. The line disappears off the edge of the map.

He sighs. “It’s only a piece. Useless without the rest.”

“I heard some say he was looking for the first Jedi temple.”

“It’s not… quite like that.” He hasn’t spoken this for years, this particular truth, never really acknowledged it, save for the quiet moments. The quiet moments when he’s been alone, nothing more than a being drawing the Force in, forgetting himself, playing with it until blue shadows are dancing lazily in front of him, between and around his fingers. Two fugitives and a droid are making him say it now.

That’s all it takes.

“Skywalker was training a new generation of Jedi. An enemy found out. Ambushed him. Destroyed it all before he could stop it.” He looks to the droid. “We’ve seen enough.”

The map folds away into the droid’s data banks. Behind him, the scavenger speaks, rising to her feet.

“The Jedi were real?” The scavenger’s voice takes on a tone of curiosity. Worse, it takes on a thought of hope. Both make Ben’s heart heavy, sinking down. When he looks at her dark hazel eyes, the hope in them doubles. His heart sinks down further. She looks on him not as if she’s looking at him, but looking through him, at the heroes of Skywalker, Solo and Organa. Destructors of the mythical, tyrannical Empire. Ben turns towards a console, fiddling with the dials.

“No doubt about that.” He scratches at his left ear. “The Force, the dark side, the light – yeah. It’s real.”

The console trills an alarm. Ben shakes his head. He must be insane.

“This is your stop, c’mon.”

Whatever brightness has been in the scavenger’s eyes dims. “You’re still taking us to Ponemah?”

He ignores her question and heads towards the cockpit, sitting in the pilot’s seat. The scavenger joins him, Finn following on and settling behind her. The droid rolls in and sits happily at Ben’s feet. He scuffs it with the toe of his boot. It beeps but refuses to move. Always stubborn, just like its master.

He switches the Falcon out of light speed. A calm blue of water surrounds the grey cantina. A turret on its east side, a chimney billows black smoke on its west side. Its stones are rocks that have come from the sea, built up piece by piece, year by year. From a far enough distance it looks like a fortress with a spirit ready to withstand any fight. Green mountains make up most of the planet; the cantina is the only base for miles around. His stomach flips.

The scavenger’s breath fills with wonder. “I never knew there was this much green in the whole galaxy.”

Those words catch him. Silently he steers the Falcon towards a nest of trees on the bank of the ocean. The scavenger jumps out of her seat even before they’ve landed.

Ben shakes his head, standing. Finn’s hand shoots out and grabs his forearm. Ben frowns.

“Sorry,” Finn says, blinking, letting go of Ben’s arm. A kid, so much a kid, but Ben can see it. There’s a soldier in there too. Finn jumps to his feet. “Just uh, Solo – I’m not sure what we’re walking into here and you should know, I’m a big deal in the Resistance. Which puts a real target on my back. Are there any conspirators here? Like First Order sympathisers?”

Ben’s mouth tilts with a smile.

“You’ve got a bigger problem than the First Order.”

Finn goes pale. “Really?”

No doubt his mind’s leaping to possible enemies, possible battles. Maybe he is a Stormtrooper after all.

(Ben really, _really_ should’ve taken them to Ponemah.)

“Yeah.” Ben bangs hard with his fist against an overhead compartment. The door topples open, revealing weapons. He looks to Finn. “Tell her the truth, or she’ll figure it out. They always do, and believe me – it’s better when it comes from you.”

“You sure about that?”

Taking out a blaster rifle and pistol, he hands the rifle to Finn. Ben strolls out of the cockpit, ducking underneath the door. “I am.”

* * *

For Rey, the sun has always been a warning of days gone. A reminder of days yet to come, of marks on her wall yet to be made. Jakku stank of sand and desert winds. The scent of the air is fresh on this planet. Vibrant greens stand beside mellow blue. Light grey shadows dapple the water’s edge. A sound she’s never heard before is in the air, but somehow she knows it already and it doesn’t raise her alarm. She isn’t blindly reaching for her quarterstaff, scrambling up to her feet. She breathes. Her pulse slows. Her shoulders slowly sink. This isn’t Jakku. This isn’t home. This is safety.

“I never thanked you for what you did on the freighter.”

She jumps, looking around wildly. Ben Solo stands behind her. His dark hair is out of its bun. That’s what she notices first. It makes him look younger, softer. Tendrils are caught in the breeze of the planet’s crisp air. He tugs at the edge of his shirt with one hand, ruffles his loose hair with his other. He catches the sun in his eyes.

Rey shrugs. “I only meant to close the blast doors. I didn’t mean to—”

“Why would you want to close the blast doors?”

Rey’s mouth drops into a small, quizzical ‘o’ shape. Her brows knit together. “To – trap the gangs.”

“Oh. Yeah, I was hoping you’d release the Rathtars,” he says casually, strolling towards her.

“You’re prepared to kill people to get away from them?” She has got into fights over parts, over items which meant the difference between a quarter portion and a half portion. She’s bled, broken and healed. She’s never had to fight for her life. As he stands beside her she finds his eyes. In all the rush, in the chase, she’s never properly seen them. There’s a strange type of darkness in there. A darkness that feels, that _is_ ancient, older than him, than her.

He offers out his hand. “Here, take this.”

Rey glances down. A blaster pistol lies in in his palm.

“I think I can handle myself.”

“I got that,” he says dryly.

She smirks. “You’re helping us then?”

“No. We’re just here to get you on a ship so you can get to Ponemah,”—he presses the blaster pistol into her hand, brusque and brash again, his face half in dappled shadow as he turns to face her—“without Bacca, me or the Falcon.”

Rey peers at him. “How did you find the Falcon anyway?”

“I told you: I was on that rock Jakku, getting parts. Found the Falcon standing past the boundary of that outpost of yours. Someone had left the door open, so I climbed inside. Your flying woke me up.” Off Rey’s disbelief, he tilts an eyebrow. Another soft breeze picks up from the ocean, ruffling at his hair. “I figured I had some time. You know how to work one of those things, right?”

She aims off into the trees, squinting at a far off rock, hidden among long, tall grass. “You pull the trigger.”

Ben laughs, catching her attention. The space around his eyes, between his brow, crinkles. His angular features, so sullen, lighten.

The Wookiee, holding his injured arm to his chest, wanders down the ramp. Finn, following him, finds Rey. There’s none of that darkness she sees in Ben’s eyes, but there is anxiety, hesitation. It triples in volume when he looks to her, but he hides it with a smile. Instinctively she returns it.

Ben approaches the Wookiee. “Hey, Bacca – check out this ship as best you can, will you? You two, the droid, with me. If we want to get you on a ship to Ponemah, Maz is the best way to go.”

Finn glances between her and Ben. “Maz who?”

“Maz Kanata.” Ben heads into a thin cover of trees, down a leafy path carved out by generations of footprints. He walks the path with the same familiarity she feels when sand seeps into her boots on Jakku. Ben continues, a warning in his tone. “She’s run her cantina for a thousand years, so if anyone’s doing the talking – it’s me.”

As they get closer to the cantina, past its gateway, there’s life to be found. Robots wandering. One is tall, metal coloured red and a loping limp in its walk. Rey wrenches her gaze from it. Flags, symbols, hang from the stone walls. Some faded. Some torn. Some made heavy and muddied by rain. Other flags flap in the breeze, their fabrics tangling together, brilliant and crystalline in their colours. High above it all, a statue of a humanoid creature stands with open, welcoming arms. She wears wide round glasses, and her stone cloak billows in a frozen breeze.

A short flight of stairs leads to square arched metal doors. They slide open with a clunk and creak that Rey could fix in less than an hour. Heavy curtains line the doorway. Past the doorway, it is more signs of life. An explosion of it.

Aliens of all kinds fill the aged space. Twi’leks, arguing Abyssins, Rodians and humanoids. It is a vast place, this cantina, and its dry stone walls are built to last. A fire burns in a large circular metal brazier. Metal pots and pans, well used, hang around the edge of the round stone chimney. Customers drink from metal cups. Heavy wood makes up the tables and chairs. Overlapping conversations in overlapping languages both familiar and unfamiliar, music and smoke make it seem as small as her AT-AT. A part of Rey wants to take this place apart, stone by stone, and put it all back together again, just to see how it works.

A shout rings around the metal and stone.

“BEN SOLO!”

Ben jerks to a stop, raising his lowered head. Everything in the bar momentarily stops too and looks around for the source. The vast space seems even smaller now. Ben swallows, sliding one hand into his pocket as he raises another.

“Maz,” he calls over the resumed din.

Experience runs in lines over Maz’s small frame. She wears no cloak, but the simple clothes of a worker. A jumper, a blue jacket, trousers and hard boots of leather. The only decoration on her is jewellery, engraved bracelets and carved rings covering her arms and hands, a wooden necklace swinging around her neck. She stares at the three of them without open arms, but a withering look.

“Where’s my boyfriend?”

Ben winces. “You only say that to irritate me, don’t you,” he mutters. “Bacca’s working on the Falcon.”

“Ach! Call him what he is – Chewbacca is his name, in case he forgot to tell you,” she adds, glancing to Rey and Finn. She grins, and suddenly the statue above the cantina makes a lot more sense. “I like that Wookiee. Glad you got rid of that stupid bun of yours.”

Ben smiles drolly. “Anything for you Maz.”

“I assume you need something. Desperately.” She beckons them over. “Let’s get to it.”

* * *

She finds him in his chambers. The son is too much like the father. His skin sallow and pale, jaw drawn tight with sharp eyes. He carries the same sneer, the same straight back demeanour. The same ruthless nature.

It allows for better training.

Hux stands in front of a mirror. His hair is combed back. He buttons the collar of his uniform, brushing imagined dirt from the black material. He squares his shoulders and fixes his hat to his head. On it, there is the marking of the First Order. Two shapes, sharp spikes in a circle trapped within a hexagon of hard lines.

Sarhu focuses on Hux’s face, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

“Sarhu Ren.” The cool tone of Captain Phasma makes her turn. “You are supposed to be aboard the Finalizer.”

She gives a single nod and moves past Phasma’s tall frame. Her fingers clench tight into her palm as she heads into the hangar. Her ship is waiting for her, guarded by two Stormtroopers. Ren climbs aboard, waiting until the ship door is closed and she is alone before she pulls down her mask from her chin, letting it fall against her chest. She wipes at her mouth. It is easy to change beliefs that have been made. Harder to change ones that have been inherited.

* * *

“A map? To Skywalker _himself_?” Ben cringes at the growing joy in Maz’s voice. He cringes further still when she lets out a delighted cry. “You’re right back in the mess!”

“I am not,” Ben says through gritted teeth. Maz scoffs. “I just need you to get these two and the droid on a ship so they can go wherever the hell they need to, and I can be left in peace.”

“Ha! You can get a clean ship anywhere in the galaxy,” Maz declares, crowing. “And don’t curse.”

“Blast it Maz, can’t you—” A dark warning look from her makes him swallow back his words. The scavenger eats her way through a plate of fruit, flicking her gaze between him and Maz. He wonders if she knows. If her hazel brown eyes can see his history through how Maz speaks to him. He shifts in his seat, avoiding her eye. His focus turns on a tall female alien. Dressed in silver and black, the humanoid passes by them. She glances at them as she walks by, as if she is nothing but another customer seeking the warmth and welcome of Maz Kanata’s cantina, but she’s been hovering.

When he speaks again, he makes sure his words are audible only to Maz. “They just need to get to the Resistance. I’m not helping them.”

“Even if you were, you know exactly what my answer would be.”

“What would it be?” Rey asks.

“No.”

Ben’s head snaps up. “ _No?_ ”

Maz shakes her head sadly.

“This is a fight you have been running away from for too long, Ben Solo. You must go back.” Her tone is firm. “ _Nyakee nago wadda._ Go home.”

It’s a struggle to hide the wave of pain that hits him at Maz’s words (old words that sink into his bones every time she speaks them). She’s wise, she’s right, but that doesn’t stop it hurting.

"Ben?" The scavenger’s question is gentle. It only serves to make him feel worse.

"I'm fine," he replies, drawing patterns into the table with his thumb. She looks to Maz.

“What fight?”

“The only fight,” is Maz’s answer. Her tone is simple enough, but her wisdom is like steel. A shiver spider-walks down Ben’s spine. “Against the Dark side. Through the ages, I’ve seen evil take many forms. The Sith, the Empire. Today, it is the First Order. Their shadow is spreading across the galaxy. We must face them. _Fight_ them.”

Maz turns her head. Her eyes begin to focus on Finn.

“All of us,” she says softly.

“There is no fight against the First Order.” Finn jumps forward, every word he speaks coming out of him in a rush. “Not one we can win. Look around. There’s no chance we haven’t been recognised already. I bet you the First Order is on their way right—”

Maz fiddles momentarily with her glasses. Lenses slide into place. Her eyes grow unnaturally wide. Finn leans back, wary, as Maz climbs up onto the table, crawling forward. Cups and food slip down past the table’s edge.

“What are you doing?" he asks, watching the thousand-year old innkeeper. His eyes flick towards Ben, seeking help. "Solo, what is she doing?”

“I don’t know.” A lie, because he’s experienced this before. Those two, too wide eyes staring. He’d been younger than Finn, more scared, cowering in a stone corner, wondering and staring into the eyes of a Toydarian. Ben adjusts his stance with a cool remark: “but I’ve seen that look before.”

Maz leans forward, eyes shining behind her glasses. Curiosity magnified into knowledge. “If you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people.” A half-amused look enters her wide eyes, piercing with an unwanted truth. Different words, but the same look. How much he had hated her for that look. (In time, that hatred had turned to gratitude.)

“I’m looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run.”

Finn swallows. His jaw tightens. Slowly, his face hardens. He leans forward.

Anger meets Maz's curiosity.

"You don't know a thing about me. Where I’m from, what I’ve seen. You don’t know the First Order like I do. They’ll slaughter us. We all need to run.”

A silence. Maz retreats back across the table, slides into her seat. She points to a pair of pirates, deep in conversation, sitting across the other side of the cantina, just visible beyond the giant hearth. One of them is tall for his species, his girth proportionate to his height. His skin is yellow, worn like the leather on Maz’s boots. A slope from his forehead to nose leads to a permanent downturned grimace. The other is masked, but has the build of a humanoid. Dressed in red and black, he gesticulates with gloved hands as he talks.

“See those two? They’ll trade work for transportation to the Outer Rim. There, you can disappear.”

“ _Finn!_ ”

As the scavenger pleads with her friend, Ben turns to Maz. With a sigh he sinks his chin against his palm. “Wish you’d given up on me that easy,” he mutters.

Maz tilts her chin up. “You assume too much. Anyway, he is older than you were.”

Finn leaves the table. Rey’s dark eyes, filled with warmth, are cold.

“Are you not going to do anything?” she demands. She breathes hard, her nostrils flaring with barely hidden anger. (He really does need to stop assuming.) Swallowing a smile, he shakes his head.

“His choice.”

She stares at him for a long moment. Her fingers curl around her cup. He blinks back at her, impassive; but his fingers twitch. He wants to put a hand on her shoulder, or just simply slide her small hand into his. He wants to do something to tell her that it’ll all be okay—but all he allows himself to do is blink. With a growl, Rey bolts out of her seat, dropping the cup and giving chase across the cantina. Maz leans closer to him. Her triumphant smile tells him she’s seen exactly what he didn’t want her to see.

“So – who’s the girl?”

* * *

They taught him how to get truths out of others, taught him how to fight. They never taught him how to give the truth. Stormtroopers weren’t made for truth. Aliens he’s never seen before surround him in strange languages. For a moment, it makes him feel incredibly small. Then he starts speaking, looking only at Rey, and it all fades away.

“I’m not Resistance. I’m not a hero.” He blurts it out, and he watches the faith in her eyes fade. Somehow, that makes it better to tell her. He won’t be able to bear it if she looks at him, telling her this truth, and forgives him. “I’m a Stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken from a family I’ll never know, and raised to do one thing. But my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn’t going to kill for them. So I ran, right into you, and you looked at me like no-one ever had. I was ashamed of what I was. But I’m done with the First Order. I’m never going back.”

He swallows. She may hate him now, but they, Maz, were talking of battles. They were talking of fighting the First Order, a fight that would lead to blood.

The villagers on Jakku had screamed and begged as they’d been hounded into a circle by his friends. His friends had picked them off one by one, mindlessly, without choice. He had given himself a choice.

She still has that same choice.

“Rey, come with me.” Her eyes are wide and searching, examining him for clues.

“Don’t go.” Her voice is thick with forgiveness. He swallows, staring into her eyes. She is terrified, just as much as he is. But she carries bravery. After all, she’s forgiven him in a breath. Him: he’s a coward who will never stop running.

“Take care of yourself. Please.”

He turns away from her and walks towards the heavy doors. Guilt pulls him to turn his head and look back.

When he does, she is gone.

* * *

Rain beats against her shoulders as she lies on her stomach. The water, every frozen drop, wipes away the heat of fire. Mud seeps into her clothes. She pants, her vision blurring. She turns her head. A scream on her lips. A smooth red beam cuts through the man before her—he collapses to the ground with a scream of pain that moulds itself to hers. Her scream disappears.

She scrambles to her feet, slipping and sliding against the ground, searching for an exit. Bodies surround her. Wind whips around her. Icy. Sharp. A twisted history.

They stand, six black figures, among the dead. One sees her. One steps forward, her red lightsaber held high as she storms forward, dark eyes flashing, her mouth and nose masked—

“ _No!_ Come back!” Her, as a little girl, fighting against Unkar Plutt’s hold—

“Quiet girl!”

A ship, taking off into Jakku’s burning blue—

Blue and white of snow. Dark trees around her.

_Rey…_

She runs, runs from the voice, through the snow, panting, legs aching.

The dark eyes find her again. They launch forward with the lightsaber. Rey stumbles. They, a woman with eyes once kind, continues forward, their footsteps crunching in the snow, blood on their hands—

_These are your first steps._

She falls back to the hard stone ground of the basement corridor. The square arches of it feel too large. The stone staircase feels a whole galaxy away. Her breath trembles. Her brain swirls. She has to get out, get away but she’s stuck there, stuck in walls that will cave in if she moves—sweat pours off her skin, soaking her clothes.

“Hey, scavenger.” She turns her head. Ben is stood at the end of the corridor. Maz stands there too, tiny and orange and wrinkled beside him. The feeling stops. The corridor shrinks, reality finding her. Ben jogs forward. His eyes meet hers as he crouches in front of her. “You alright?”

“What was that?” Rey blurts. She jumps to her feet. Fear grips her tight, her breaths are catching again, and her hands are shaking. Her knees buckle. _The Imperial I-class Star Destroyer carries seven main engine units and a Class 2 hyperdrive…_ “I shouldn’t have gone in there—”

Ben stands. “In where?”

Rey, tears welling in her eyes, points.

Ben ducks under the doorway into the storage unit, heading towards the box. Rey flinches as he doubles back into the corridor. His whole body seems to tremble. His eyes are wet. Not out of fear like hers. Anger. Barely contained fury. There’s that darkness there, the darkness she’d noticed before. Her young face, screaming, weeping, flies into her head. Her young eyes, wet with tears and dark with grief.

“Where,” he asks Maz, with dangerous composure, “where in the hell did you get that?”

Maz demurs by holding up her hand. “A good question, for another time.”

“Skrog, _look_ at her Maz! Tell me! Where did you get that damn saber?!”

“Ben, away!” Maz snaps. “I will tell you soon enough. Let me talk to her.”

Ben hesitates, but he storms back down the passageway. His body still trembles and his fists clench tight. Maz looks upon Rey with the same sad eyes that she had looked upon Ben with when she spoke to him in a foreign language and told him to go home.

“That lightsaber was Luke’s. And his father’s before him, and now…” Her sadness is animated with hope. “It calls to you.”

Harsh sand. Harsh words exchanged between scavengers. Home.

“I have to get back to Jakku,” she says, shaking her head.

Maz nods. She pushes her glasses to the top of her head. “Ben told me.”

The hope remains in her eyes. She holds out a hand.

With a trembling breath, Rey takes it. It is soft. It is warm. It is a comfort that Rey has spent nights aching for, calling out into the night for. The galaxy had only replied with more days, more time. She sinks down to her knees. Maz’s hand holds onto hers, her small thumb stroking the palm of her hand.

“Dear child, I see your eyes. You already know the truth.” Sympathy threads into her voice. “Whomever you’re waiting for on Jakku? They’re never coming back.”

One scratch on the wall for every day. 6,688 scratches. Every so often, she would count each one. Tears fall against her cheeks.

“But… there is someone who still could.”

The Jedi. The last Jedi. “Luke.”

“The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead.” Maz shrugs. “I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. It moves through and surrounds every living thing. Close your eyes. Feel it. The Light – it’s always been there. It will guide you.”

Maz’s eyes snaps open.

“The saber.”

Rey’s blood runs cold.

“Take it.”

Luke Skywalker is a myth. He is a rumour passed on to others, a rumour that she’s overheard as a child in Niima Outpost. She does not belong in a world of stories.

“I’m never touching that thing again. I don’t want any part of this.” She has to get back to Jakku. Her family is waiting for her. She runs up the steps, out into the din and smoke of the cantina. She has to get back there. To Jakku.

“Hey, hey—” Ben’s voice in her ear, his hand on her arm urges her back. Gentle, but her lungs tighten. Everything is too large again. “Where are you going? What about BB-8?”

BB-8 appears at the top of the stairs. He tilts his head and beeps.

She wrestles her arm from Ben’s grip.

“I thought you weren’t helping me,” she says sharply, every word an effort. Her family is never coming back, no-one is waiting for her—she shakes her head. Jakku. They will be waiting for her on Jakku. If she accepts that they won’t, she’ll break, she’ll crack, the pain will be too much and the pieces left of her will be scattered across the stars, stars she has promised herself she’ll see when her family come back.

Ben takes a step forward. He seems to raise his arms, but he scans her. His arms drop back to his sides. “I’m not.”

“Then let me go.”

She whirls round, pushing through the thick crowd. She runs into air that is too thick, too crisp. She runs down the path of earth into grass and overhanging trees. The green floods her vision, branches catching at her clothes, voices in the wind pleading with her to turn back, to stay. To pick up that damn saber.

Pain in her gut forces her to stop. With tears, she looks back. All she sees are two dark eyes, once so kind, now hollow and black, with blood on hands. Turning her back on the cantina, she runs until the fear leaves her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sitting on this chapter for a good few months, I thought it was worth letting go of it and hoping beyond all hope that people actually like it. Fourth (and final!) chapter will be up as soon as I can write the damn thing.

They come to a planet without night or day. Six black figures. Snow whirls around them. In an icy cave far below, a child shivers, too frightened to cry. Gulps of air come out in clouds of his breath. For every blow, every scream, it is a sharp pain to his body, a deafening echo in his ears. Until, at last, it is over. Each pain weighs heavy on him.

“Ben!”

“Master!” He struggles to his feet, his boots slipping and sliding on the damp rock. He throws his arms around his master’s waist and finally weeps. His Master pushes him back. Defeat is lining his face. He looks so old, Ben thinks with wonder. He had looked so young when first he had met him. His Master crouches down and picks up a rock. Ben steps back. Tears still stream down his face. He can’t stop them however much he tries.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“Stay still.”

Master holds the plait between his finger and thumb so tightly that he can’t move. He pleads, begs—the sharp stone scratches his skin. The thin plait lies in his Master’s hand.

“Monster!” He launches at his Master, beating at his robes. Master grasps his thin wrists, pushing him back. He studies him. Master looks not old, but sad. It is the first time he has seen desolation like this. And he knows he must obey. He lets his hands drop to his sides, lowers his head.

Master’s arms hold him, rock him. His beard scratches his cheek.

They return to the ship when Ben’s tears dry, his cheeks frozen cold by the planet’s endless snow, its endless night. It is through the endless night that they walk. They pass bodies. Master’s grief has made him another creature, walking alongside, mourning the dead and bending down to close their eyelids, passing a Jedi prayer over them, whispering apologies.

They fly now to a city standing among the clouds. Master is gone. Ben waves his hands, absentmindedly creating spirits in the space. He continues throughout as they walk through corridors, sitting in meetings, throughout negotiations his father holds with a dark-skinned human who wears a cape.

He stops when he hears exactly what they’re bargaining.

He drops his hands to his sides. The spirits fade.

The screams start when his father disappears into an orange sky filled with clouds.

* * *

The New Republic is no more. Just as the Empire was once no more, but there is no celebrating. There is no-one she can hold onto, who will pull at her and wink as he guides her into the dark red forest, kisses her below the stars and planets she has fought so hard to keep, the only time she feels a lightness that she knows can never be hers—

Sarhu splashes her face with water, throwing away the thoughts into the back of her mind. The thoughts of a woman long dead, destroyed. Stormtroopers talk about upgrades outside her chambers.

Her reflection finds her. She raises a hand (she’s shaking, just as she had shook when Alderaan was destroyed, crumbled to dust in front of her eyes—but those aren’t her memories, it is her pain, but it is not her grief) to touch the exposed portion of her face.

Oh, but she is old. Every bone within her aches.

Phasma enters her chambers without announcement, carrying her blaster, and Ren drops her hand. Turns to face her.

Phasma tilts her head, inquisitive behind the mask. A soldier’s curiosity. No. The curiosity of a mercenary. Captain Phasma, after all, wears her mask voluntarily. She has found freedom in that mask. “Something wrong, Ren?”

“Do not question me. How far are we from Takodana?”

“The Stormtroopers will be there momentarily.”

“Prepare my ship,” Ren says, squaring her shoulders. She will not need her Knights for this battle. The Stormtroopers could take the place within a manner of minutes. Her Knights will train, and she will fight. She speaks her thoughts, and Phasma nods.

“Very well. Supreme Leader Snoke shall be informed.” Phasma departs on her last word.

* * *

On her second shot, Rey shoots a man dead. Not the first injury she has struck, but the first life she has ever taken. Retaliating shots from the Stormtroopers, once the subjects of so much gossip on Jakku, force her to flee. _She is coming…_ The wind whispers to her in that same strange voice, lilting and calm, a father’s reassurance. _Run, Rey. Run!_

She takes another life, but doesn’t mourn them.

“You have to keep going, stay out of sight,” she says as she crouches down to BB-8, its loyalty causing it to chase her down when she felt she might splinter. Now, she feels whole, the voice guiding her and the Force running through her. _She is coming…_ “I’ll try to fight her off.”

BB-8 beeps. She nods.

“I hope so too.”

Let Finn be safe, she thinks as she runs. She knows he hasn’t gone. She had felt a darkness when she’d seen him leave the cantina, a loneliness that she already knows too well. She cannot stop to imagine how she would feel if he left her for good. So she knows. He has stayed, he is fighting, and all she can do is hope beyond all hope that he remains safe.

A shudder thunders up her spine. She stumbles to a stop. Goosebumps on her skin. She’s coming. She turns and hides, pressing herself against a moss-covered tree. _Let Finn be safe_ , she thinks again. Her fingers sink into the damp of the tree trunk. She thinks it over and over like a prayer. _Let Ben, let BB-8, let Chewbacca be safe._

Pulsating, edging closer. The feeling seems to come from everywhere. She aims wildly. The unknown sound, the birdsong, once so calming, alerts her to another presence.

A footstep. She aims again.

A hum. She aims.

She edges backward into a line of rocks, covered by moss, dark orange leaves scattering the brown muddy earth. Particles dance in faint white shafts of light above her, around her.

The red lightsaber from her vision steps out, followed by hollow black eyes, a masked nose and mouth. She fires, misses. The figure comes closer. She fires again. It is batted it away, sparks flying off the lightsaber. The figure, female, pushes forward.

Rey scrambles up a rock to a higher level of the forest, turning back to fire again and again. Surrounded by green trees, the female pushes on, every shot pushed to one side with every step and flick of her lightsaber.

Always coming.

Rey goes still. The blaster pistol in her hand, her finger wobbles against the trigger. Her whole body trembles against the Force, trying to fight the trap. The female figure has a half-amused look swimming in their dark eyes. Rey immediately knows she could do so much worse. Holding her there, trembling and fighting, every breath shuddering; it’s a kindness.

“Tell me,” the figure says with softness. Her voice is clear from behind the mask, and it takes Rey back to the visiting mothers warning their children on Jakku to stay safe, and the want she felt for one of her own, someone who cared that much about her safety. “Where is the droid?”

With effort, Rey pulls her mouth closed into a thin line. She breathes hard through her nose.

“Hm.” The hum disappears as the female retracts her lightsaber. She attaches it to the belt at her hip. “Tell me where the droid is, and I shall let you go.”

Rey struggles to shake her head. The female’s eyes narrow. Her head tilts.

An invisible hand reaches inside Rey’s mind. Sweat beads on her skin from the effort of running, from the effort of staying unnaturally fixed in this one spot. The fingers of this hand caress her, delving deep inside, sifting through. It’s painless and that makes it all the worse.

“You’ve seen the map. The droid showed it to you.” A strange tone enters the female’s voice. One wistful. One Rey carried whenever Plutt held back a half portion and gave her a quarter to fill her belly with. Rey gasps an attempt at a protest. It dies before it can brush the tip of her tongue.

“Ma’am,” a Stormtrooper says. “Resistance fighters have arrived. We need more troops.”

“Give the order to pull out,” the female commands. Without warning, Rey collapses onto the leaf-strewn earth, and the dark finds her.

* * *

His legs pound into the dirt, past ruins and flames. The blaster slams into his leg as he runs; he abandons it, throwing it to the ground, his eyes only on the shuttle. Rey, carried by two Stormtroopers, Sarhu Ren leading the way up the ramp. The ship’s ramp begins to close. He runs faster, throwing an arm out. If he can just reach out, reach her and maybe he can pluck her from the hold of the Stormtroopers. His friend, his _friend_. He’d fought to keep her safe, Maz had told him to keep her and BB-8 safe—

“ _REY!_ ” He screams her name, watching, helpless, as the shuttle lifts into the air, its rockets firing. Finn spins on his heels, his heart thumping as he runs over the aftermath of a battle that seemed to last forever. His first battle.

“They took her,” he says, over and over, as he runs towards Ben. A ship, its white and blue paint chipped, flies low over his head. He ducks, still running towards Ben. “They took her. She’s gone.” They have to save her. He has to save her.

Ben nods, concern etched into his permanent frown.

“I know, I know,” he says, half-distracted, watching the landing ship. The doors open, folding out into a ramp. Dressed in yellow and brown uniforms of jackets and caps, Resistance foot soldiers fan out into the battlefield.

Following them is an elderly man, outfitted with a white shirt and dark trousers and hard boots. He wears an aged leather jacket. Finn knows him straight away. The images the First Order had given them in training had been of him as a young man, with a smirk and brown hair. Bags under his eyes, hair grey, Han Solo’s features are heavy with responsibility. The trademark smirk has become exactly that.

“Master Solo!” Finn jumps at the sound. A protocol droid, golden in colour except for his left arm, gives a cry of joy. “It is I, C-3PO! You probably don’t recognise me because of the red arm.”

Ben shuffles his feet and strokes his chin. He is used to this droid. “It suits you Cee.”

“Why thank you Master Solo! It really has been too long! I—”

“You still givin’ nicknames to everything?”

The protocol droid, C-3PO, stops at Han Solo’s gruff question. Realising the tension, the droid bows his head towards his master.

“I’m so sorry Han – I mean, General.” He gestures towards BB-8, ushering him away. “Come along BB-8, quickly.”

Ben avoids looking straight at his father. General Solo’s eyes shift towards Chewbacca. His features briefly lighten with a grin. The Wookiee and the general hug each other in greeting.

“Hey Chewie. It’s been a long time.”

Chewbacca roars in return. Whatever he says has both Ben and General Solo wincing at the same time.

“Yeah well,” General Solo murmurs, patting Chewbacca’s arm, “Had a lot of things to do. How’d the – uh, Rathar thing go?”

He directs that question to Chewbacca, but the Wookiee tilts his head towards Ben, grunting something before he heads inside the Resistance ship.

“We never got the money,” Ben mumbles.

“She took her.” Ben and General Solo look to Finn at the outburst. He squares his shoulders and steps forward. “Sarhu Ren, she took Rey.”

General Solo looks furious for a moment, then stricken. “She was here?”

“Yeah. She was here alright.” Ben gives a ghost of a smile, and his voice is too bright. “I saw Mom.”

* * *

D’Qar could’ve been a planet of mountainous beauty, but now it is a planet of war. Poe leads Finn down to the headquarters. Hidden beneath the greenery of the planet, its stone walls, damp with old rain, buzz with activity and hushed conversation, carrying equipment from wars held before. He’s seen this equipment, in books of history skewed to the side of the First Order. Inefficient, the books had claimed this equipment. Unreliable. Finn had wondered how the Empire could’ve been defeated if the Rebellion had used such primitive, outmoded equipment. (He’d asked his friends that question, and they’d blinked back at him, their minds without an answer.)

Poe approaches General Solo, surrounded by other pilots and other Resistance soldiers. Finn stands back, folding his hands in front of him. Some of the soldiers carry the general’s age; others are as young as he is. They all carry the same responsibility.

“General Solo – sorry to interrupt,” Poe says hurriedly, making General Solo turn, “this is Finn.”

“Yeah, the one who saved you. Thanks kid,” General Solo says, breaking through the circle of soldiers and crew. He pats Finn on the arm, focusing on him with heavy, clear eyes. His smirk twitches with a smile. “That was brave, what you did. Poe told me you ended up on Jakku.”

Finn nods. “Yes sir, and thank you sir. But a friend of mine was taken prisoner.”

“Ben told me about a girl.” Han glances over to where Chewbacca sits, in the medbay, attended on by a middle-aged dark-haired nurse. “Chewie filled me in. We’ll do what we can to get her back.”

“Finn’s familiar with the weapon that destroyed the Hosnian system,” Poe says. “He worked on the base.”

“Huh, a bit of good news.” Han clasps a hand onto Finn’s shoulder. “Like I said, we’ll do everything we can to help, but first – you gotta let us know what you know, kid. I’ve got a bad feeling we’re working with something far more dangerous than the Death Star.”

“General,” says a Resistance crew member some distance away. “We have recovered the map from the droid.”

General Solo sighs, already moving off, his shoulders slouched. “This is not how I thought this day was going to go.”

* * *

The sickly green light of the hologram looms over the interior of the base, its shape slowly rotating, somehow eager to let everyone know the unfortunate news. Ben remains in the shadows of the hologram. Occasional glances go towards him, as if people can’t quite believe his return. (Not a surprise.)

He slips further back into the shadows.

Talking to Han, Cee isn’t helping the situation. “I regret to inform you General, but this map recovered from BB-8 is only partially complete. And, even worse, it matches no charted system on record. We simply do not have enough information to locate Master Luke.”

Han’s face draws together into tighter lines.

“Makes sense. Luke’s never made things easy.” Fondness amidst the anger, showing in the flick of a smirk. That smirk disappears as rapidly as it appears. Han stomps away from the hologram, moving over to a console, moodily studying its information.

Ben risks a step forward. “At least it isn’t a fake.”

“Hm.”

A gruff dismissal. Ben glances around the headquarters. Some people avoid his eye; others do him the courtesy of not looking up from their work in the first place. All of them carry tension in their bodies, shoulders squaring, ready to witness another fight.

Ben sighs, lowering his head. Over to his left, there’s a small pile of debris, gathering dirt and dust, and under the pile of equipment that’s finally given in, flickering and beeping and dying, there’s unmoved shards of glass that once carried patterns of stars, maps of galaxies.

His eyes find his hands. The scars, once red gashes that spilled blood, are nothing but little nicks now. They could’ve been picked up from anywhere.

He tries again.

“I know I haven’t been – helpful, in the past.”

“You sure have a way of understating things,” Han remarks. He remains studying the console. Ben can’t find it in himself to argue. All he can do is sigh and listen to everything around him until he’s lost in it. Finn, outlining the plans of the base to Poe and the other pilots. Cee, telling BB-8 how R2-D2’s probably never going to turn back on. Cee tells that damn story to anyone, anything, he encounters. Maybe it’s a droid thing. Ben’s never thought to check.

He’s pulled out of it by a mention of his name. He looks up. Han’s staring straight at him. Ben cuts him off before another argument can start.

“She’s gone. Nothing can bring her back.”

The same stricken look hits Han. Ben shrugs in return.

A crew member pops up at Han’s side, ready with information. He gives a short bow. “General, the reconnaissance report is ready.”

Han nods, once more the general, once more the commander, and turns away. People gather around the table. Finn stands opposite Han, his dark eyes jittering from face to face. Anxious for this briefing to already be over. The kid’s got a plan, maybe half a plan, Ben can see that, and he wants to implement it. Han carries the same anxiety as Finn, though it’s weighed down by responsibility, as everything is. Ben hunches over the table, avoiding Han’s eye. Poe, ready to speak, looks grim, and Ben already suspects why. Poe Dameron doesn’t do well at hiding his feelings.

“This is what our reconnaissance team brought back,” he begins with a heavy tone. Down through people’s legs, Ben sees BB-8 bump his master’s leg in encouragement. Poe brings up a hologram of a planet carved into a weapon. A canon, larger than any Ben has seen on any other planet, stands out from its surface, a reminder of its new purpose. “Starkiller Base,” he announces.

“It’s another Death Star!” Major Ematt cries. Poe shakes his head.

“I wish it was.” He presses a button and the two are side by side. Starkiller Base dwarfs the Death Star, a legend to some and a memory to others. Ematt looks like he’s about to pass out. Snap, another pilot, rubs his beard and glances to Poe. Poe is lost for something to say.

“We’re not sure how to describe a weapon of this scale,” Snap says, coming to Poe’s rescue. “They’ve somehow created a hyper lightspeed weapon built within the planet itself.”

Where Ematt looks haunted, Admiral Ackbar has clear eyes as he looks upon the two rotating holograms. Sensing the mood in the room, Poe presses a control. The Death Star disappears and Starkiller Base takes precedence.

“How is it possible to power a weapon of this size?” asks Ackbar, still studying the hologram.

“It uses the power of the sun,” Finn answers, his eyes settled now on the hologram of Starkiller Base. “As the weapon is charged, the sun is drained until it disappears.”

An officer appears in the crowd, discreetly pushing past bodies until he reaches Han. He presses a datacard into Han’s already stretched out palm. Han’s face confirms the feeling stirring in Ben’s gut.

“The First Order’s charging the weapon again,” Han announces. He scans the already tense faces. His attention brushes over Ben, not lingering. Not a surprise. “Our system’s the next target.”

Murmurs spring up around the room. Cee comments the obvious: without the Republic fleet they’re doomed. A sharp, hard sensation of alarm, of warning, pushes against Ben’s body. He brushes it to one side. They don’t need the Force; they need a damn strategy.

“We could just blow it up.”

Bacca, heading out of the medbay with the nurse’s arm wrapped around his (charmer), lifts his head. All eyes fall on Ben like he’s suddenly grown another head, or shapeshifted into a Clawdite.

“Ben’s right.” Everyone is surprised to hear Han’s words. Ben blinks. Han looks over the crowd and gives a shrug. “There’s always a way to do that.”

Discussion pops up about the possibility of thermal oscillators; Finn lights up. Maybe his half-plan is forming into a full one. Ben leans forward, keeping an eye on the kid as he moves towards Poe, taking over the controls. The hologram moves as Finn speaks, zooming in on a black hexagonal structure.

“There it is, right here.” He flicks a switch, highlighting the hexagonal structure. “Precinct 47.”

Admiral Statura’s eyes glance over the highlighted structure. He frowns, thoughtful. “If we can destroy that oscillator… it might destabilise the core and cripple the weapon.”

“Maybe the planet,” Ematt warns, still with that haunted look.

“We’ll go in there and we’ll hit that oscillator with everything we’ve got,” Poe declares, a smile growing at the corner of his mouth. The predilection for plans seems to be catching.

Ackbar shakes his head. ”They have defensive shields that our ships cannot penetrate.”

“We’ll disable them,” Ben finds himself saying. Even he’s infected. Maz’s crowing echoes in his head. He swallows a smile and a shake of his head, and glances towards Finn. “You know the base, right?”

Finn, the kid that he really should’ve taken to Ponemah Terminal pauses, then nods. “I can do it. I can disable the shields, but I have to be there. On the planet.”

The mood in the room has changed now at this new information. The blank faces fill with hope and the murmurs turn excited. Poe presses a control and the hologram of Starkiller Base disappears.

“So,” he says, “we disable the shields, take out the oscillator and we blow up their big gun. All right. Let’s go!”

The crowd disperses, the pilots heading up the stairs out to the surface. Han remains at the console, staring into the space where the Starkiller Base hologram hovered above the crew and soldiers. The responsibility has returned, settled back into him as familiar to Ben as the pilot seat in the Falcon, as familiar as the Falcon itself; its faults and foibles, the wires that would short circuit and require crash landings and a day of repair on a strange planet.

“It’s my fault. I know it’s my fault.” He keeps his tone clinical, flat. Han still flinches. He folds his arms across his chest, digging his heel into the ground. Ben shrugs, shuffling to stand beside his father. His tone softens, despite himself. “If it hadn’t been—”

“I insisted we stop. You shouldn’t have been on the Falcon in the first place.” Han lifts his head, turning his attention towards his son. His eyes are soft for the first time. They flick down to Ben’s knuckles, scuffed and scarred. Among the scars, there are marks of grease on his hands, scuffing the tips of his fingers.

“There was no other way out,” Han says, quiet. “You’d have been dead otherwise, kid.”

Han twists his body away from the map table, walking away. Ben tucks away a smile. _Kid._ It’s been a while since he heard that.

* * *

A weight is at both of her wrists. She’s bound. Her ankles too. She blinks, her vision blurred. She blinks again, tilting up her head. Her whole body is at an angle, restrained in a metal rig. At her side, the woman stares at her, unblinking and brown eyes cool. The cell doors close with a hiss.

“Welcome aboard,” the woman says. She carries the same wistful tone Rey caught in the forest. The woman steps closer.

“Where are the others?” Rey blurts. The woman’s eyes change with a spark of something. Rey squeezes her eyes shut.

In the long silence, a fat tear rolls down her cheek. If the woman didn’t know of them before, Rey has confirmed their existence. For the First Order, for this woman, that is enough.

“I have no idea,” the woman says coolly. “Now, tell me about the droid.”

Rey opens her eyes, finding the woman again, who is patient in the wait for an answer. A strange, fatalistic bravery comes over her. It’s the bravery of the heroes in the stories she’s heard on Jakku.

“It’s a BB unit,” she says before she loses nerve, “with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator—”

“It’s carrying a section of a navigational chart – the last piece of a map recovered from the archives of the Empire.” The woman’s tone is flat now, her eyes losing whatever shine they had. “Tell me about the droid,” she repeats.

Rey draws back her head, settling it back against the metal rig, a line of curved metal tucked against the nape of her neck. A tingling sensation gathers up her spine. That painless presence, a hand caressing her mind, accessing her thoughts, comes again. Rey shakes her head.

“I’m not telling you anything.”

The woman doesn’t reply. The presence in her head deepens. A sting, becoming a throb, sits at the back of her skull. The throb becomes a pulse. Her fingers twitch as she pushes back, her wrists rubbing on the metal restraints. The pulse edges further and further, a desert wind catching at the hem of a cloak.

A white hot heat crawls over her skin now, a mixture of fear and confusion—desperation—that is colourless, numb and alive at the same time, feeling everything and nothing.

The woman before her is Sarhu Ren. Images flash before her, smudges of another event, rain on glass with white light on a battlefield, looking down at red blades that slash, bodies that fall. The desperation rears up, quelled by a hand on her shoulder. What’s happening is right. A sacrifice, for the future. It will be a sacrifice made right. Fury mixes in with grief, sinking low into her stomach. A harsh, mechanical breath echoes over the scene.

“You’re afraid,” Rey snarls, images gone and Sarhu Ren standing before her, a frown in the previously passive eyes. “That you’ll always be in his shadow. Aren’t you?”

The presence in her head disappears. Ren’s fists clench at her side. Her eyes spark, widen, but fall back into the passive warmth once more. She leaves.

Rey pants, sinking back against the rig. The Force.

* * *

Snoke greets her with a nod, his hologram form flickering blue at the tips of his fingers and the hems of his robes. Sarhu Ren bows at the knee and stands, folding her hands before her.

“Supreme Leader,” she says shortly. He gives a greeting in reply, a single slow incline of his head.

“Sarhu Ren. What news of our prisoner?”

“Of little value,” Sarhu says. “She has not been with the Resistance long. They won’t bargain for her.”

“Then let her go,” Snoke replies, with a wave of his hand. “The Resistance will be destroyed soon enough. Hux has begun charging the weapon.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” She ignores the flip in her stomach, the tremble of her fingers. She feels tendrils sinking into her mind, Snoke’s curiosity searching. She closes doors before he can find them, staring up at him. She pulls her mask from her chin. “The girl is strong with the Force. Untrained, but that can be corrected.”

Snoke narrows his eyes. “Another follower?” he asks, half amused. His eyes glaze over with the familiar calculating manner, plans forming inside his head. The tendrils of his curiosity withdraw from her mind. She keeps the doors closed. Snoke glances over the empty amphitheatre. “If the droid is already in the hands of the Resistance… and if her powers are great as you claim, Sarhu Ren… then bring her to me.”

Nodding, she turns. She walks the corridors of Starkiller Base, approaching the girl’s cell. The Stormtrooper on guard is still, hands behind his back. She stops, glancing over them. The cell door is open.

“Tell me where the girl is.”

“I will remove these restraints, and leave this cell with the door open,” replies the Stormtrooper. He pauses. “And I’ll drop my weapon.”

The remnants of a mind trick. The girl won’t know she’s likely turned this trooper’s brain into sludge, with only one command carved into it. The damage of raw, untapped power. Sarhu thinks back to Hux, pleading for approval from Snoke through military plans. The girl is young, like him, but she holds a power far more permanent than cannons and hollowed-out husks of planets. Sarhu turns on her heel and hurries down the corridor.

* * *

If Maz could see him now. Outside, officers and engineers and pilots hurry from station to station, readying for this battle. Maz would sit in the co-pilot’s seat and swing her legs and crow about how she’d been right all along. Bacca roars a greeting to someone entering the Falcon; Ben pauses, his fingers hovering on the switches. He twists in his seat. Han’s frame fills the entrance of the cockpit, a smile on his face at the sight of the ship.

He points to the co-pilot seat.

Oddly, like he’s forgotten how his limbs work, he stands. Han eases past him and settles into the pilot seat, flicking switches and adjusting overhead dials. Ben sinks into the co-pilot seat, cocking his head at Han.

“Thought I’d stretch my legs. See the stars,” Han grins, glancing back. “Hey Chewie – don’t mind taking a back seat for this, do you?”

A roar comes from somewhere in the belly of the ship, then heavy footsteps down the ship’s ramp.

“What?” Han asks Ben, turning to face D’Qar’s sunlight. His grin falls as the Falcon whirs and dies. Ben slams his hand on the compressor.

“I don’t like it either,” he mutters. Han grumbles. The Falcon rises into the air.

Time for battle.

Ben really hopes the kid knows what he’s doing.

* * *

_Kill him. Be merciful_ , whispers the voice. Tendrils crawling over her mind, into the pulse of her body. She remembers seeing Han, Ben, lips split, ribs broken, clothes torn. The leader, a blaster bolt to his leg, helplessly clutches spilling blood with his fingers, the limb splayed oddly on the rocky ground.

“There’ll be no turning back—” the leader pants. “We will never stop, Organa. Never.”

 _He is dying_ , the voice insists, tendrils sinking deeper. She closes her eyes. This man, this enemy of the New Republic, has to be brought to justice. He has to face trial. Ben’s dark eyes had cried before her, words on his mouth. Mama, he’d sobbed, dragged back across the rocky ground. _Give him mercy_ , comes the voice again. Darkness edges on her heart as the blaster sits heavy in her palm, aimed at the leader’s head. _Give… him… mercy._

“I gave him mercy,” she will say soon enough, a year from now, when she can see no way out, when tears streak her face and her mind is nothing but fear. She will lift her head, and stare up at curiously amused eyes. The words will stick in her throat, but there will be time later to hate what she has done, to fear what she has become. It will be a time when it is either this, or everything. “Now you must give me something in return.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many thanks to all of you for reading this, and leaving your comments. Shout out to [dietplainlite](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dietplainlite) for leaving the thoughtful comment that kicked me well enough in the arse that I finally got this thing completed.

He knows the air here in Chandrila. It is fresh and clean. Master Skywalker sinks to his knees before him as they come to the main square. Humanoids and aliens walk hand in hand, arm in arm, happiness shared.

Master’s smile is not one of happiness. His eyes do not match it. His beard has grown a little on the long journey here. His desolation hasn’t abated, only deepened. When Master Skywalker hugs him, Ben finds some kind of relief. Master is going on a journey; he can feel it in the Force, along with something else, something he’s faintly felt since before he can remember. If he tries to remember the source of it, all that meets him is an empty space. Master draws back from him.

For a moment, Ben considers telling him of that odd shimmer he feels in the Force, which sometimes, in the dark, tries to pull him closer.

He spots his father approaching through the crowd in the main square. His _father_. Yelling out, Ben eagerly pushes past legs and bodies, already too tall for his age, his ill-fitting robes shifting as he runs. Ben wraps his arms around his father’s legs and hugs him tight.

“Hey kid,” says his father. Ben lifts his head. He narrows his eyes. In his excitement, he didn’t notice it before. His father has a weight in his eyes, which he didn’t have before. His father hugs him again. “I’m a general now,” he says, with a strange calm, like he isn’t used to the address.

Ben turns his head, looking through the crowd. The bodies shift and push and slip between one another. Master Skywalker is gone.

Ben steps away from his father, slipping his hand up to feel his father’s rough-skinned palm.

Master Skywalker’s journey has begun, but he has his father now.

The sensation pulls at him then, quite suddenly, clutching around his heart. Ben squeezes his father’s hand.

His father frowns.

“Something wrong?” he asks him.

“Nothing,” Ben says quietly, breathing. The sensation has faded.

* * *

With his father’s old blaster to her cheek and the logo of the Resistance on his back, he stared into the eyes of a Knight of Ren. Of the leader of the Knights of Ren. Ben stared into her brown eyes and knew immediately. ( _How? How could you not tell me,_ he’d demanded, 21 years old with fury roaring, rising, rearing forward until all words were gone, glass was smashed, and blood streamed from his knuckles.)

Ben lounges across the cramped space of the medbay and stares up at the ship’s ceiling. The Force always gives him the memories when he doesn’t expect them. This is why he doesn’t sleep. Clenching his fingers to his palm to cease the trembling, the chattering in his head, he swings himself up to standing. He walks towards the cockpit. Finn stands behind Han.

“Wait—” he spits out in disbelief. Ben slides past him, sitting in the co-pilot seat. “We’re making our landing approach at _lightspeed_?”

The stars flood Finn’s features, like thunder. Ben hides a smile.

“You said it yourself kid: those shields have a fractional refresh rate. Keeps anything travelling slower than lightspeed from travelling through.” Han nods to Ben. “Get ready.”

Flicking switches, obeying the general, Ben holds on tight.

The endless blue becomes white and grey, mountains of solid rock spattered with grey. Ben throws himself back against the seat. Every thud, every judder, every near miss. He flinches.

“Han—”

An indignant roar, a rattling, comes from the ship’s bowels, from the engines themselves. Han grapples with the controls.

“I _am_ pulling up!” Han yells, though who he’s yelling at is unclear. The whole of the Falcon tilts back, flying low over a jagged cliff face, scattering snow from trees as they crash through the forest, branches and trunks snapping—

“ _Han!_ ” Ben shouts as the whole body of the ship rattles.

“I get any higher, they’ll see us!” Han snaps, his grip tightening on the controls. The Falcon bursts through the trees to the crisp white sky and—snow. The whole ship spins across the icy snow, Han’s grip useless against gravity—

Ben is thrown forward, then immediately backwards, as the ship judders to a clunking halt. Han sinks back in the pilot chair.

It’s Finn who speaks first.

“C’mon,” he’s already out of the cockpit, halfway down the corridor, “we don’t have much time.”

Ben sighs, running his hands through his hair.

“What this ship’s been through,” he murmurs.

Han grunts in response.

* * *

“Okay, so, how are we doing this?” Ben zips up his jacket to his chin as Han speaks. Han looks at Finn. “You worked on this thing kid.”

“The flooding tunnels are over that ridge. We’ll get in that way.”

Han nods, urgently. Ben’s struck with how fragile Han looks, huddled in a winter coat and wretchedly thin scarf. His legs are spindly, feet already covered in snow. Shaking his head, Ben focuses on Finn.

“What was your job while you were based here?” Han asks, scanning the horizon behind the kid.

“Sanitation.”

Ben freezes, his brows disappearing up towards his hairline, at this announcement. Han grabs Finn by the shoulder, shoving him against the wall of the beacon they’re huddled behind to hide from the wind.

“ _Sanitation_?!” he hisses, more incredulous old man than smuggler or general at this moment. “Then how do you know how to disable the shields?”

“I don’t,” Finn confesses. Ben looks properly at Finn then. He really _isn’t_ a Stormtrooper, this kid. Stormtroopers follow plans and other people’s goals. This kid is making it up on the fly. He’s ready to run.

“I’m just here to get Rey.”

With the girl in tow.

(To be honest, Ben doesn’t really see the problem with that kind of plan, and he can almost _feel_ the kick Maz would give to his shins at that.)

“People are counting on us,” Han says, frustrated and despairing within the same anger. “The galaxy is counting on us!”

“General – Mr Solo – we’ll figure it out.” Finn’s eyes light up, while the snow and the wind batters around them. “We’ll use the Force!”

Ben can’t help it. He shakes his head.

“That’s not how the Force _works!_ ” Han replies, incredulous.

Finn looks guilty, but rolls his shoulders, and starts off towards the tunnels.

“Force it’s freezing,” Ben mutters. Han side-eyes him.

“Oh really? _You’re_ cold?” Han makes off after the kid. Above them, there’s a white streak of sunlight, thundering through the thick cloud. The weapon’s charging and Ben remembers, among all the bickering, what they’re fighting for.

* * *

Captain Phasma is the key, it turns out, to Finn’s plan.

“She’ll do what we ask, believe me,” Finn says to both Han and Ben’s unconvinced faces. “She isn’t like the others – she’s – she’s out for herself.”

She’s patrolling the corridors, while the tannoy above mentions a search for a prisoner. Ben can’t help but crack a smile as he leaps out, grabbing the captain around the shoulders and dragging her into a side closet.

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you—” Ben wrenches the chrome bucket off her head. Blonde hair flops over two chips of ice blue eyes, and she sneers as Finn comes into her view.

“Remember me?”

Ben holds Phasma tight against the wall, restraining her.

Phasma lets out a slow, dangerous breath. “FN-2187.”

Han brings his blaster to her chin as her fingers trace over the trigger of her rifle. Ben extracts it from her hands.

“Not anymore,” Finn retorts. “The name’s Finn and I’m in charge now Phasma, I’m in charge—”

It’s an excitable puppy finally standing up to the bully of its elder.

“Bring it down, kid, bring it down,” Han murmurs. Finn mellows, clearing his throat.

“Yeah.” His attention shifts back to Phasma, his expression darkening. Ben realises, with a jolt, just how much this means to the kid. He knows only vague things about the current trooper programme. They take kids from their families and empty their brains of thought so they’re mindless and brainwashed and think nothing of massacring an entire village.

He’s a smuggler, he’s done bad things. He’s turned a blind eye. Some might say that makes him as bad as the First Order.

Ben tilts Phasma’s rifle at the back of her head.

With hard eyes, Finn leans in towards Phasma.

“Follow me.”

* * *

Phasma is tight-lipped, silent, as they march her towards the block which contains the computers for the shields. She’s silent still as Ben slams her into a chair and puts her in front of the glassy, glossy graphics, so far removed from the clunky equipment of the Resistance.

He sees her upper lip curl with a snarl as he sits beside her, resting the heel of his boot on her chair, and aims her rifle at her head.

“I should’ve known it would be you, FN-2187. You were always scum.”

Finn flinches but aims his rifle at the other side of her head anyway. “Do you want me to put a blaster bolt through your head? Lower the shields.”

“You’re making a big mistake.”

A smile tilts at the edge of Finn’s mouth.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m not talking to you, _Finn_ ,” she says slowly, as she taps in a code. She turns her head, looking straight at Ben. “I’ve looked through the archive files. I find it’s always good to know your enemies just as well as you know your allies.”

“Got no friends? No wonder,” Ben replies, but he shifts. Her gaze is steady, unthreatened by the two weapons aimed at her. As if she knows she will survive this.

“I have as many friends as you, Ben Solo.”

“I’m hard to get along with.”

Bacca growls in agreement.

“You might think my enemies are the enemies of the First Order – the Resistance. I couldn’t care less about your pathetic band of rebels.”

Ben smirks, ignoring the prickling sensation at the back of his neck. “Out for yourself. I kind of admire that.”

“Ben,” Han speaks up for the first time, stepping forward. “Don’t engage. She’s trying to save her skin.”

“Of course I am. This is a war, and anyone who fights for a cause dies for the cause, sooner or later. Foolish error.” Phasma spins in her chair, causing Ben to drop his leg; he winces but he keeps her rifle steadily aimed at her forehead. “My enemies are the ones currently on this ship. Don’t you want to know what I found?”

Ben keeps his attention firmly on the captain. “I’m sure it’ll thrill me.”

“Don’t worry if any of the corridors seem familiar here, Ben Solo. You’ve been here before.”

Ben swallows thickly. His grip trembles on the blaster. “Doubt it.”

“I have no reason to lie.”

“You’ve got every reason.”

A press of his finger and the blaster bolt cuts quickly through her left shoulder. Phasma roars, falling forwards, clutching her shoulder. She wrenches her head up, dragging up her knee in an attempt to stand.

“You’re all scum,” she spits, and she stumbles up, slamming a button on the console. On the screen above, the blue diagram of shields, crisscrossing over the base, slide back. In Basic, information scrolls over the screen. Every single shield, lowered.

Phasma grabs a fallen trooper’s rifle, staggering towards the doors. She rips the chrome armour from her arms, her chest, leaving it scattered behind her. Tapping in another code, she cracks a grin as she presses her hand to the blaster wound.

“I’d get a move on if I were you. My troopers will storm this block and kill you all.”

The doors open behind her, and she runs down the corridor.

“No!” Finn starts forward, trying to chase after her. “ _No!_ ”

“Kid, kid, kid!” Han grabs him, pulling him back. “Remember Rey – hey! Remember – you’re here to get Rey.”

Finn calms, his breathing heavy. “You promise, Solo?”

Han nods. “We won’t leave here without her.”

The questions linger on Ben’s tongue ( _Is it true? Was it true? You lied before_ ) but as Han looks to him, guilt in his sigh, the questions dissolve and fade away. Standing, Ben abandons the rifle, and grasps his blaster, following Finn and Han out into the corridor.

* * *

“Okay,” Finn whispers, as Han crouches behind several crates, a short distance in front of them. Ben checks his blaster, ignoring the questions still rolling around in his head, as Finn drops to a crouch beside him.

“The cells are through that blast door. We’ll use the charges to get through. I’ll go in and draw fire, but I’m going to need cover.”

Just as Ben nods, he feels a shiver in the Force. He assumes it’s Finn.

“You’re sure about this, right?”

“Hell no. I’ll go in and try and find Rey. The troopers will be on our tail – we have to be ready for that…”

Ben feels the shiver in the Force again, stronger. It’s not just a flicker, like any ordinary signature. It’s the signature of another Force user, a Force user in hiding. Ben lifts his eyes to over Finn’s shoulder.

Sure enough, there’s the scavenger. Through the viewport, he can see Rey climbing the hangar walls, easily jumping from one foothold to another.

“Hey!” Finn’s urgent, offended whisper catches Ben’s attention. “I’m trying to come up with a plan.”

Ben points. “Look behind you before you do.”

Finn narrows his eyes, turning towards the viewport. Ben can see the relief in how Finn’s shoulders slope and how he presses his palm to the glass.

“C’mon,” Han says, seeing Rey too. “Less amazement, more rescuing.”

When they round the corner, barely two minutes later, she rounds the corner with her blaster raised and gasps, jumping back.

“You all right?” Han asks, calming her. She nods.

“Yeah, I’m—” She swallows. “I’m fine.”

“What happened to you? Did she hurt you?”

Rey frowns; there’s something else on her mind. Ben moves closer, sensing it. Maker, the Force spills out of her. Right now, there’s a confusion and a stubbornness—an unwillingness to talk about what she’s witnessed or perhaps even what she’s done.

Ben feels the sensation in his blood, knowing it far too well.

“Finn, what are you doing here? What are any of you—”

“We came back for you.”

“It was his idea,” Ben says, causing Finn to turn around, glancing at him over his shoulder. Rey’s eyes fix on Ben, soon returning to Finn. She looks overwhelmed simply by the idea of people wanting her.

She throws her arms around Finn, hugging him tightly. They whisper to one another, a brief conversation muffled by clothing and how tightly these two fast friends hold one another. Ben hears parts of it.

“—you get away?”

“Can’t explain it – you wouldn’t believe it—” Rey breathes, and she squeezes him once more, before she pulls away, smiling. Her smile hesitates, then widens as she approaches Ben.

“Thank you too.”

He stiffens, shuffling his weight from foot to foot. “For what?”

Rey envelops him in a hug, though he’s more of a wall where hugs are concerned than Finn is. “For coming back.”

Awkwardly, he puts his arms around her shoulders. She’s tall for a female human, but she’s still so small and that makes him feel even more freakish. But she hugs him tighter, pressing her cheek to his chest, and he allows himself to be lost in the embrace for a moment.

“Destroy base now, hug later,” Han pipes up, and Ben blinks, remembering where he is. As if scalded, he jumps back from Rey and nods.

“Good idea.”

* * *

The girl is gone, and now, the Resistance is here. Along with their general.

She feels it in her heart, more than she does in the Force.

He had always joked he was attached to her somehow. That they could travel through lightspeed to either side of the universe, and still the string between them, the connection between them, would never break.

 _It doesn’t matter many times we fight_ , she’d say in reply, _I always hate watching you leave._

Sarhu Ren walked quickly into the space of the main hangar. A squad of troopers marched behind her. She scanned the vast, empty space.

“Search every area,” she commands. “Find them.”

The troopers split apart, quick to obedience.

Behind her mask, Sarhu’s breathing trembles. She hears, a distant echo (a memory) of a rattling mechanical breath, like a shadow.

The girl hadn’t got it quite right when she’d invaded Sarhu’s mind. The shadow wasn’t the problem. Its existence was what gave her the pain but separated her from the grief of Alderaan and the grief her parents, now scattered into the stars, with the planet of her childhood nothing but a cluster of asteroids.

The footbridge echoes underneath her footsteps, hundreds of miles above the white heat of the engines. To look up at the ceiling of the hangar is to almost look up into space itself.

“LEIA!”

The universe stops on a pinpoint.

It seems to her they’re the only ones that are alive in it as she turns to face him.

“Han Solo,” she says, measured but Leia still peeks through, his name softened in her voice by history. She finds it difficult to care about that as he steps onto the footbridge. “I’ve waited a long time to see you again.”

“What’s it been? Thirty years?”

His humour bleeds with pain.

High above, just to her right, a set of blast door opens. Through the light from the sun, drained of nearly all its energy, soon to be trained on D’Qar, home of the Resistance, home to Han Solo, Sarhu sees two young figures. One is the ex-Stormtrooper, FN-2187. The other is the girl. Rey.

To her left, a tall figure, dark-haired, aims a blaster rifle at her.

 _Hello Ben_ , she thinks, knowing he cannot hear her. Cannot feel her.

Han walks forward. His pace is slow like he’s approaching a wild wolf.

“Take off that mask. You don’t need it.”

It takes all her effort to incline her head as if she has no plans to obey him.

“What do you think you’ll see?”

His crooked smile appears, bringing back too many memories. She squashes them underneath the heel of her boot, centring herself on what she did to Mikata. That rare loss of temper. Snoke had chuckled when she’d confessed to the deed.

“The face of my wife.”

Her hands tremble as she lifts them towards the mask, towards the hood that covers her hair. Tightly, she clenches her fists.

Han merely waits.

She draws back the hood. She pulls down the mask, which is a scrap of silk and it rests around her neck.

Though she feels old, she knows that she does not look it.

He has aged slowly, a wrinkle coming with each year, a grey hair gradually becoming the thick tuft of grey hair atop his head now.

Her hair is thick and youthful, with only a tinge of grey at her temples. Only a few lines surround her eyes.

She fully embraced the Force, and as her punishment, the Force gave her more time.

* * *

The planet was dust and grey. The sky grew dark, overshadowed by the arriving ship. It gleamed black, a remnant and a reminder of the Empire. The New Republic’s shining light, the one who had brought peace to the galaxy alongside her smuggler and her brother, wiped the blood from her mouth, her head and body heavy from blows. She held her makeshift brace as she stood, limping slowly towards the opening ramp of the ship.

Wrapped in gold, the voice that had whispered inside her from when she was 19 years old.

“Well done, Senator Organa. You are as strong in the Force as your father feared you were.”

Leia sank into the dust of the planet, falling onto her hands and knees. She clenched her fingers, grasping at gravel and dirt.

“Tell me,” he said. “What mercy am I being asked to impart?”

She choked on another cough, this time filled with blood. “

“Ah, yes,” Snoke hummed. “Mercy. Easily given – but for a price.”

She pressed her head against the mud. A broken sob released from her chest. “They beat my son! My husband! They almost killed them – because I – I suggested peace.”

“I know. However much you try, they always wish war. Don’t they?”

His fingers threaded through her hair.

“I…” She hiccupped, tears streaming down her face. “They took Ben…”

As revenge, they took Ben away from her. She had looked away, for just a moment, her and Ben among the thrill of it all; the heat, the weather, the markets, the sellers, the food, the smells and the sounds. Ben loved Coruscant. He giggled as Force users happily displayed their skills for credits and he gazed in awe at the cultures; what they made, how they behaved, how they spoke. She had let Han go with Chewie for a smuggling job, making him promise he wouldn’t get in too deep.

“If Calrissian calls, you’ll know what state I’m in,” Han joked, kissing her and Ben goodbye.

Confident with the crowds of Coruscant around her, Leia negotiated the price of two Mandalorian oranges with a vendor.

One moment, she was playfully haggling credits. The other, Ben’s hand slipped from hers.

“MAMA!” he screamed. She dropped the food, letting it scatter, squashed underneath the feet of other buyers. Glimpses of Ben through the clothing of humans and aliens, him being dragged away by a hulking horned figure, whose leader she had given mercy.

“BEN! BEN!” Hysterics filled her mouth as she stumbled over someone’s skirt, and Republican guards rushed forwards towards the ship’s ramp, where the alien slung the squalling, crying Ben over his shoulder. The guards opened fire as the ramp closed and the ship flew up into the air.

“No – no – no! _Ben!_ ”

They were gone from the atmosphere. Gone from Coruscant.

Leia fell to her knees. A crowd gathered, amazed at the sight of Senator Organa weeping and panicked, on her knees, sobbing out her only son’s name. Republican guards grabbed her, hauling her to her feet.

A party went with her to the alien planet. Wind and dust whipped up around them. None of them knew the terrain. They were wiped out in an instant, the ship destroyed.

Alone, beaten, Leia sobbed and prayed to the Force.

She received silence.

“Please,” she begged. “Please…”

Luke promised. If she prayed to the Force, the Force would give her an answer.

_Leia… I can get him. I can bring your son home._

“Not you,” she whispered, clinging to her blaster, huddled behind a small rock, while the aliens chattered and bragged about their victory. Ben sniffled and sobbed, and they bid him be quiet with blows to his head. “Never you.”

The voice chuckled, seeing her thoughts. _You would take them alone?_

She breathed hard. Once, twice. Jumping to her feet, she ran through the scattered bodies of her guard, firing on the aliens.

She marked one of them before another smashed their arm into her face, knocking her on her back. One stamped on her leg, crushing the bone. They grunted and huffed as they set to beating her, while Ben sobbed.

To her shame, she surrendered.

They left her then, to slip into unconsciousness.

When she awoke, she was broken and bleeding, and Ben was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be found. When she reached out with the Force, she felt only his pain, weakening her further.

So, when the voice came again (when Snoke came to her again), she finally said _yes_.

Snoke chuckled again, a laugh without mirth, as he pulled himself away from her.

“I know,” he said, with false sympathy. “The pain of losing a child is too much to bear. But you can save him. Before, you saved him, Leia. Save him again.”

She was silent, for a long moment, to his words. His persuasion.

“You know my condition, don’t you? You are smart enough.”

“I gave him mercy,” she said slowly. She lifted her eyes to meet his. In the silence, she bared her teeth. “Now you must give me something in return.”

Snoke sighed, triumphant.

“Go,” he ordered, with a wave of his hand, “find her child. Give mercy to those who stand in your way.”

His troopers wore the colours and armour of Death.

Leia watched them until they were a dot on the horizon.

Tears wetted Leia’s eyes and fell down her cheeks.

* * *

When the sky was turned to inky blue, they returned. They had blood on their armour, and one cradled Ben in their arms. Blood streaked his chin and nose, and his eyes were pink from crying. The trooper held him out to Leia.

He outstretched his hands, begging for her.

“Mama,” he choked out. “I’m sorry Mama…”

“Oh Ben,” she wept, hugging him close. “Oh Maker, oh God—”

She cradled him, almost doubling over with relief as she held him. Snoke turned his back.

“Bring them,” he ordered, flinging the command over his shoulder as he walked up the ramp, into his ship.

Leia struggled to her feet. She held Ben tight as she limped slowly into the dark recesses of the ship and a new destiny. The Force beat within her, the rupture growing bigger with every step she took.

But, as Ben calmed in her arms, Leia watched Snoke carefully. He drank some exotic wine, and drummed his fingers against his knee, pleased with himself.

Leia looked back at Ben, stroking his cheek with her thumb.

“The man scares me,” he whispered eventually, when the ship was off-planet, thundering through hyperspace. “He wants something.”

“He does,” she said softly, stroking his thick dark hair. “But he won’t get it, little starlight. He won’t get what he wants – not at all.”

* * *

"You got old.” Han speaks into an ever-growing silence. Leia knows she should step back as he comes closer, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She thinks too much, of that day. When she stroked Ben’s cheek and promised him Snoke wouldn’t get what he wanted. Her, tightly pressed underneath his thumb.

(For a while, he hadn’t. For a while, she fed the growing Resistance, feeding them with intel, writing notes to Senators who she knew favoured the coming war. For a while, bit by bit, she weakened the structure of the First Order. Until a Jedi padawan, tired of Luke Skywalker’s training, turned spy for the First Order and divulged the location of Luke’s academy. Snoke’s Deathtroopers marched on children and teenagers, killing without thought. From Snoke’s ship, Leia watched the massacre. She scanned the horizon for Ben, but she saw nothing but the dead. A new part of her heart, her spirit, broke for every life taken, while Snoke took the six most promising students and christened them his knights. With a twisted smile, he made her their master.)

“It’s too late, Han,” she says. She can’t help but smile at the domestic exasperation in her tone. Exasperation, when as her husband looks at her, old and tired from fighting, she feels increasingly torn. Like she’s possessed by two bodies.

Sarhu, the broken warrior.

Leia, the fighter.

Han gently shakes his head.

“No, it isn’t. You can still come home, Leia. We miss you.” Han swallows. He speaks in a whisper, taking another minute step forward. “ _I_ miss you.”

“Will you help me?”

Han’s eyes are earnest. “Yes. Anything.”

She breathes hard. Slowly, evenly. She brings forth her saber. Sleek and black, forged in the heart of her father’s palace. Not too soon after the massacre. Not too soon after she had been named Master of the Knights of Ren and gifted the name Sarhu.

She keeps her eyes entirely on Han’s face as her thumb traces over the button. Just a breath and the saber will activate.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

It’s a punch to the gut. She gasps, stuttering. Han catches her, looking around wildly. Ben is above them, his blaster aimed at her gut. Leia clutches her side, falling to her knees, doubled over as the pain wracks her body.

“Han, run!” Ben’s voice echoes.

“Leia—” Han gasps, cupping her cheek, his fingers ghosting through her hair, tracing over the wound. “Leia…”

Fire unfurls with the sonorous sound of several explosions going off at once. The hangar’s walls engulf in the flame. Leia cracks a smile. No doubt the result of multiple charges, placed on every other column.

Her husband is predictable.

“Dad, for Maker’s sake, run!”

“ _Not without her!_ ” Han yells back at his own son.

“Your wife… is gone, Han,” she breathes, catching his attention. His eyes widen. He shakes his head, firmer this time.

“No, that’s not true. It’s not—”

She keeps her eyes steady, reaching up. She caresses his cheek.

“Ben just saved you.”

It’s as if she has destroyed his universe with a single click of her fingers. He slowly stands, and turns away, running down the footbridge. Leia looks up, clutching her saber tightly to her chest as she stands. Pain shoots through her body again.

Ben gives her one final look before he glances at the fire, spreading rapidly over the oscillator, and he runs.

Above, FN-2187 and Rey clutch one another, unsure of what to do.

Leia rolls her shoulders, igniting her saber. She advances.

Leia Organa or Sarhu Ren, she has a mission. She will complete it.

* * *

The scream of the TIEs echoes in the dark sky, followed by the heavy guns of the base and the whine of the X-wings.

“We need to split up,” Ben says, as Rey and Finn arrive at the base of the oscillator. He feels the heat of the fire on his back. “Han, you get back to Chewie and the Falcon that way, over the snow. Take this,” he adds, shoving his father’s coat at him. “Keep close to any shelter you find.”

“I’ve done this before, kid,” Han says heavily, throwing the coat on. He breaks into a run.

“Rey, Finn – with me.” Ben throws his bag over his head, onto his shoulder, arming his blaster. “We’ll cut through the forest.”

He could barely see what was happening between Ren and his father. All he had known was that one of them needed protecting. The general, the one who led the Resistance.

At his first chance, he shot her. It’s a shot of adrenaline and despair to remember how at the last moment, he’d aimed for her side, rather than her head.

Maz’s crowing runs through his head as he clambers up the side of the hill, towards the thick line of trees. Rey is just behind him, Finn too. He flings his hand out, and Rey grasps it tight.

“Finn, come on,” she urges, panting.

_You are right back in the mess!_

Finn breaks through to the front.

“Falcon’s this way,” he tells Rey, pointing. Ben’s kind of grateful he told her because, in this half-daze that he’s in, all he knows is: get away, get safe.

It’s in his genes. The smuggler blood.

“Oh no.”

Ben shakes off the daze at the hum of a lightsaber.

Sarhu Ren is a dishevelled mess. Her hair whips around her, snow landing on her clothes and her skin is pale, the exhaustion in her eyes plain to see. The blood from her wound spatters in the snow, blood on white.

Her focus falls directly on Ben.

His footsteps crunch in the snow. Distantly, the TIEs whine. Fire and smoke are the scents.

“… Mom.” He sees for a second, her bottom lip moving, her eyes changing. Mellowing. He kids himself, for a second, that he might calm her. Distract her long enough for everyone to get away.

If he could, she wouldn’t have chosen the Dark. If he could, he wouldn’t have been pushed from his father to Luke, then back to his father, then to Lando, when being a general and a father proved too much for Han Solo. Lando wouldn’t have dropped him off on Takodana as a favour to his old friend, and Ben wouldn’t have been raised by Maz Kanata. He would’ve been raised by the woman stood before him.

Would she be a general, like Han? Or a princess, like so many years ago?

“Give me the girl.”

That breaks the silence between them, and the spell he slipped into, of past lives and possible alternate universes.

Ben shakes his head.

“I can’t do that.”

She roars, a great release of everything, and the sting of a saber’s blade across his face blows him back. The last he hears before everything goes black is Rey calling his name.

* * *

Rey has killed Stormtroopers. She’s fought on Jakku, with clumsy blows of her staff.

She’s never been more terrified as she has facing Sarhu Ren.

Sarhu slides away from Rey’s attempted blows, made in panic, like water, her body a blur of Dark energy as she spins on the ball of her toe, raising her blade to strike a blow upon Rey’s head. With a yowl, a yelp, Rey blocks the blow. Behind her, the surface crumbles into a cliff. The heat of the planet’s molten core is on her back as Sarhu Ren pushes her back, again and again, until she is at its edge, struggling underneath the pressure of Sarhu’s anger.

The two blades locked together shine blue and red on both their faces.

She can’t win. Not against this. Not against the Force itself.

Maz’s words fill her head again.

_Now, it calls to you… Feel it… It moves through and surrounds every living thing._

“The Force,” she whispers. Sarhu frowns in the face of it.

Rey grits her teeth. 

The Force. 

It will guide her. 

She trusts it as she slides out from underneath Sarhu, leaving Sarhu to turn, with bared teeth. 

Sarhu returns with a flurry of blows, but Rey blocks them all with ease. 

She leads the charge now, rather than running from it, circling Sarhu to jab the saber at her in another flurry of blows, clumsy but now with true power behind them.

She slices low at Sarhu’s ankles. She smells cauterised flesh as Sarhu falls on one knee, her cloak ripped and burning, her ankle grazed by the saber, which is enough to make her fall.

Rey hisses in the cold air of Starkiller, stalking her prey.

Sarhu leaps forward, but Rey is ready. She blocks the swinging blow, gripping Sarhu’s wrist, and forces her blade into the snow. Sarhu struggles, spitting, panting, but the blade breaks, the saber flung off into the distance. Rey swings out, and it cuts across her enemy’s face.

Sarhu collapses to the snowy ground.

A voice enters Rey’s head, far away from the kindly, fatherly voice that guided her on Takodana.

_She is weak… Begging for death… Be kind. Bestow your mercy upon Sarhu Ren._

Rey breathes, taking in the scent of burning. For a moment, there is burning hatred within her. Anger, terrible white-hot anger that she feels unable to control.

It would be easy enough. To stand over Sarhu Ren and impale the blade into her chest.

A rumble fills her ears, and the ground splits, separating Rey from Sarhu. The thoughts fade, and she is left only with fear.

Fear of what she has done. What she thought to do.

Fear for Finn.

“Finn,” she gasps, finding his unconscious body. Overwhelmed, adrenaline flooding from her body, she collapses finally, weeping against his chest.

Light fills her vision, the white light of the Falcon, and it is Chewie who roars at her in greeting, Han who waves at her from the pilot’s seat, as Chewie hurries down the opening ramp. Far away, the planet ruptures. Chewie gathers Finn in his arms. Rey follows.

It is when Finn is lying in the medbay, safe from the base’s destruction, that dread fills her heart.

She knows what it is. She feels fear for Ben too, as she realises. She left him, on that side of the forest, with that monster.

Worst of all: she left him.

Without thought, with hesitation, she left.

* * *

Ben blinks awake to a collapsing planet and his mother’s body beside him.

He crawls, ignoring the pain that flows through him from the blow to his face, rapidly towards her. An ugly slice of a blade marks her face. He shakes her, checks her pulse. Strong, thriving.

He gets his survival streak from his mother and the tendency for trouble from his father. Maz told him that.

He hears from above a whir of engines. High above, some way off in the distance, there’s a First Order shuttle arriving. Come to take her away.

In her belt, he notices a tracker, gently beeping her location to a personal code no doubt.

The questions he ignored in the heat of battle, in the heat of needing to do something good after doing so much bad, come flooding back with one look at her face.

There’s something missing from his past.

Like hell will his father tell him any of it.

The only clue, the only lead? Is her. The woman once known as Leia Organa, known as his mother.

“You’re going to hate me for this,” he mutters, ripping off the tracker. Scooping her up, he runs through the trees towards a familiar sound of engines. Through the canyon, the Falcon flies, Han in the pilot seat and Rey in the co-pilot seat, Rey’s eyes searching.

“Hey! Hey!” Ben calls. Rey’s eyes widen as they fall on him. Han seems frozen for a second. Then he brings the Falcon in to land.

* * *

Her face is scarred by the very blade Rey wielded. The scavenger admits this with a shy blush coming to her cheeks. She shuffles towards Finn, sitting on the floor beside him.

They’re already far away from the crumbling base, their mission completed.

Han couldn’t care less about what Rey did to survive. They’ve all done things to survive. To stay sane in the face of another war. He gave up his only son, focused on trying to be a general. Ben smashed equipment to bits and bled in an attempt to cope with the realisation his mother had fallen, and his father had lied. Finn ran, and probably still is (Han doesn’t blame him), from his life as a Stormtrooper. A cog in the machine of the First Order.

Chewie has been… Chewie.

Leia… she gave up everything.

Ben stands away from his mother, leaning against the cockpit entryway with a cup of caf in hand. He’s got a scar to match his mother’s, half-repaired by their limited bacta. Most of it has gone on Finn. Behind Ben, the Falcon plunges through the hyperspace lane, back to D’Qar. (The First Order knows their location. Soon, there’ll be an evacuation to organise. He should contact Ackbar about that.) Chewie checks over Finn.

It’s Han who approaches the sleeping wildcat in the bay, the one scarred by a young desert orphan. It’s simple really. He stands. Picks up a blanket. Puts it over her shoulders.

She opens her eyes.

“You know… The First Order will find me.”

Every word sounds half-hearted and false coming from her lips. Han watches her, nodding slowly.

There’s a crunch of glass and wires. It comes from Ben. Not breaking eye contact with the floor, he crushes a tracker under his boot.

“Sorry about that.”

Ben disappears into the cockpit.

Leia clutches the wound at her side, frowning a little at the bandaging. Han is used to patching those kinds of wounds.

“You’re still full of surprises flyboy,” she murmurs, sleep taking her.

* * *

Sitting behind a curtain, looking through at the medical unit, Ben watches the ysalamir skitter around its small cage. He’s on the edge of the bubble they create, and he kind of wants to stay here all day. Not using the Force for a while seems like a good idea. Maybe things will seem sort of, well, normal again. Like he can kid himself he’s still just back in this for a couple of days.

The Toydarian doctor flits in the corner of the med bay. All precautions have been taken. The ysalamir are kept in a cage by the patient’s bedside, and it is only people who can’t be affected by the Force allowed in close range of the First Order’s chief enforcer.

Sarhu Ren, Leia Organa. He doesn’t know her name just yet. She sleeps, kept in a coma in a glass dome, statistics and readings consistently taken and splayed across the glass in Basic.

There will be the talk of what to do with her later. Some might just suggest immediately sentencing her. Some might suggest a trial. Ben’s still unsure of where he’ll lay his cards when that discussion comes to pass.

Maybe he’ll do what he does best and run away.

(Looking at his mother in that tank again, for the countless time, he knows he won’t.)

Idly, Ben traces the shape of his half-healed scar.

Dr Kalonia told him because of the lack of bacta, he’s most likely going to end up with a thin scar across his brow and cheek. Thankfully, she didn’t make a “one for the ladies” joke. Mostly because she knows Ben. The idea of a smuggler is a lot more appealing than the reality of one.

“Ben! Oh—” Rey puts her hands on her knees at the feel of the ysalamir. Ben gets up, rubbing the high of her back. Her hair is in its messy three buns, and she’s still in her clothes from Jakku, dusty and yellow from the sand with snow clinging to the bands around her arms.

“I know. Bit weird at first.”

He guides Rey to a chair, dropping into a crouch before her.

“How are you doing there, scavenger?”

She smiles slightly at that address. “Finn’s going to be okay. Dr Kalonia told me. And – and we found the rest of the map.” She rubs her temples, still getting used to the sensation of the ysalamir.

“The map,” Ben repeats the phrase flatly, though a million emotions running through him. The map. His uncle. His hand goes to his neck, his fingertips feeling the scar at his neck.

Rey nods.

“Yeah. Han’s sending me to find him, along with Chewie and Artoo. Artoo had the rest of the map inside his data.”

Ben laughs. It’s a full break of a laugh, that causes the Toydarian to try and hush him, but when Rey joins in, he gives up with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head.

“We can’t laugh,” Rey says through her giggles. “We can’t.”

“I know – I know. But that’s… that’s very my family.” He glances down, finding that Rey’s fingers have softly interlinked with his, quite unconsciously for the two of them. He swallows thickly, standing.

“I was… I was going to ask you to come with me.”

Under the effect of the ysalamir, it feels like being in a bubble. Everything’s both muted and heightened at the same time because it feels like all his senses are gone. They come back as Rey looks at him, worrying her bottom lip.

Ben glances towards the bed and the glass dome where his mother lies. She already looks older, and more fragile, marked by her father’s saber and dressed in a soft robe of white.

“It’s okay,” Rey says. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

She gets up, going to leave. Ben finds himself reaching out, as he had in the forest. Her fingers fit into his so easily that he gulps, stuttering a little on a phrase he knows too well.

“May the Force be with you.”

Rey smiles.

Later on, he’s at the front of the crowd, watching as Rey, in Resistance clothing of grey with clean skin and a bright smile, boards the Falcon. Chewie is with her and lifts the Falcon into the air.

“Old friend,” Cee says to Artoo, “it is good to have you back.”

 _Maybe soon_ , Ben thinks, _we can have everyone back._

* * *

On this shell of a base, which was once a forest planet with a winter climate, they healed him. Quickly, efficiently. Like it never happened. They repaired her too. Just like it never happened.

Surrounded by light and white, Ben plays with the Force, lifting toys into the air to his delight. He seeks Leia, for a smile, for pride or approval. Overwhelmed by just how much she loves this boy, she picks him up, grasps him tight and cuddles him.

“Mama,” he whines, “lemme alone.”

He snuggles into her anyway. Leia sits back, stroking his hair.

“I wish I could show you Alderaan,” she murmurs. “It was so beautiful, Ben. The fire in the library roared and crackled. Mother and I, we spent so many nights there, with Father, talking and joking and… being a family. Did I tell you of when Tarkin came for dinner there?”

Ben yawned. Outside, beyond the viewport, a distant star, far off in the galaxy, was in the process of dying. It roared and churned. “Who’s Tarkin?”

“A very powerful, very bad man,” Leia murmured into his ear. “He suspected Bail Organa and Breha Organa, my mother and father, of rebelling against the Empire.”

“He was right though.”

She kissed Ben’s temple. Tears hovered in her eyes. “I was there too. He questioned my father, but my mother play-acted. She accused my father of affairs, numerous ones until I broke down. I cried, as loudly, as messily as I could. It was the one thing I could do, to get rid of Tarkin that night. And it worked. It didn’t allay his suspicions, but it brought my parents time. It brought the Rebellion time.”

“I’ll be a rebel,” Ben muttered sleepily. “When I grow up.”

Leia rubbed his back, soothing him. When she spoke again, she kept her voice soft in his ear. “I hope you do.”

Standing, still carrying Ben, she watched the far-off dying star.

Ben lifted his head from her shoulder. His tiny fists clenched at her robe. It was black and threaded with gold.

“You’ll be there, though.”

Leia pressed her lips together, into a thin line. Wordlessly, she put Ben down, sitting cross-legged before him.

“Ben, look at me.” Maker, his eyes were wide and dark. And so ancient already. As if the Force had waited a thousand years just to make this child. She remembered what she’d thought of him, when she’d felt him kick and reached towards with the Force, with the thought of comforting him. She knew he would be a fighter.

His defiance would shake the stars.

(She really, really hoped it would, one day.)

“You understand the Force, don’t you?”

“It’s a power you have. And Unca Luke.”

“It’s not just a power, little one. It’s a companion. It sees you through every stage of your life, and you can speak to it. It can speak to you in return, but only if you let it in.”

Ben’s ancient eyes pierced her, for a horrendous beat, where all she heard was the roar of the stars. His brows arranged themselves into a frown. “When will I see you again?”

Had he felt it? Was that what had caused him to ask? Feeling her grief, knowing this would be the last time she saw him again? 

Behind the door, she heard muffled conversation.

They were coming.

She thought she had more time.

Force, why couldn’t she have more time?

“Come here.” She opened her arms. Ben threw himself at her, looping his arms around her neck.

“I don’t want you to go,” he whispered. She clutched him tight, feeling his tears coming.

“If your father does what it is right...” Ben burst out a sob. Leia rubbed his back, rocking him gently. “Hush. Hush my darling. We will not see each other for a long time. You see, I have agreed to something. Something that's to do with the Force.”

“Why?” Ben cried into her chest, his tears staining her robe.

“To save you,” she said, cupping his cheeks. With her thumb, she wiped away his tears. “I’m doing this for all of you. Snoke wants me to give myself up, to become his apprentice in the Dark side. Like hell, my little starlight. The First Order will be crippled, from within its own walls. I will be the one to do it. Please… please tell me you understand.”

As tears brimmed in her eyes, his faded with a sniffle and a gentle nod of his head.

“I think I do, Mama.”

Closing her eyes, Leia felt her tears drip down her cheeks as she waved her hand, stitching a wall over her son’s memories.

It was selfish, to tell him of her plan. Dangerous. But she had to. If she hadn’t made that promise, made that vow, it would be too easy to forget.

It is always too easy to forget a vow you make to yourself.

Make it to someone else, announce it to the world, and it becomes a duty.

In her arms, Ben fell asleep, snuggled against her neck. When he woke up, he would remember nothing of this day. He would not remember being broken, her blood, her words, nor her confession.

The doors opened.

Leia looked up. Two Deathtroopers entered the room. One snatched Ben from her arms and took him from her sight.

Snoke glittered in his golden robes. His features twisted with another gruesome smile. She felt the tendrils of his Force powers invade her mind painlessly. With a stony glare, she slammed a wall up against them.

Snoke’s smile vanished.

“The old Empire ran itself into the ground. You, Leia Organa – my apprentice – oversaw its destruction. You made it into nothing but ashes and an extinguished fire. It is time to begin your training, and for you to see a way towards the First Order.”

Another presence lighted the Dark in the room. A flickering flame, raw and young. Leia’s heart tightened and ached as it thrummed.

_Ben._

She felt a youthful snatch of hope. _Mama?_

Closing her eyes, she imagined a wall. Brick by brick, a wall in front of the image of her son, carried in the arms of a faceless Deathtrooper. He was still asleep, his subconscious calling out for her.

The nebula slowly expanded along the horizon of the galaxy.

Perhaps she would. Perhaps she would fulfil her duty to her son. Hopefully, one day, the New Republic would shine as it was meant to.

She looked out into the stars.

“Godspeed, Rebels.”


End file.
